In today’s Good News, a team of devoted volunteers fighting back against illegal dumping are beautifying Houston one neighborhood at a time. And in New York City, an otter makes a surprise appearance in the Bronx River — the first documented sighting of the animal in this once heavily polluted waterway in more than a century.

Catherine Garcia
The Week Digital

Visitors to Zion National Park can now borrow an all-terrain wheelchair to better explore the area. Zion is the first national park to own and maintain such equipment, which expands park access to those with disabilities, mobility issues and injuries. The Extreme Motus wheelchairs glide over rocks, sand, gravel and grass and can float on water. They can be checked out on a first-come, first-served basis, and Zion plans to offer additional wheelchairs and accessibility devices in the future.

Volunteers are driving Mobile Culture Buses around rural areas of Syria to bring books and art to children who can’t visit a library. The buses go where schools and community centers were destroyed during the war. “Our thinking was simple: If they cannot go to culture, we must bring culture to them,” said project director Mohammad Murad to Positive News. Buses stay in one spot for several hours, with volunteers putting on puppet shows, reading stories and distributing art supplies.

Clean the Block, which started as a small organization to tidy up Houston’s Sunnyside neighborhood, has grown into a citywide effort. Andrew Beaver founded the group to tackle illegal dumping on empty lots and in the streets. Volunteers dispose of abandoned furniture and other debris, and clean and landscape blighted areas. The goal is for Clean the Block to help people “continue to have pride and feel there’s hope for their community,” member Iyana Admasu said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

An otter was spotted in New York’s Bronx River for the first time since the early 1900s, when the waterway was polluted with slaughterhouse and factory runoff. An image of the animal was captured by a motion-activated camera owned by scientist R.J. Hawkins. “I could hardly believe what I was seeing,” Hawkins told The Guardian. The river has undergone conservation work, and the otter sighting shows why “long-term wildlife monitoring and environmental restoration efforts matter.”

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