Much environmentalism today assumes that humans are always the problem, and our activity is always harmful. But the more we study, the more we realize how resilient living things are.

Recently, USA Today and the BBC reported that the infamous Pacific Ocean garbage patch—an area of more than 610,000 square miles littered with manmade trash—has become a thriving habitat for small marine animals. 

Scientists have found arthropods, crabs, and mollusks on more than 90% of debris—some of the species that would never live so far out to sea. 

This story is similar to a report a few years ago that peregrine falcons are now more common in some major cities than they are in the wild, primarily due to the abundance of tasty pigeons. 

Of course, litter is very bad for the ocean and the environment, but these reports remind us how resilient life is… it’s almost as if it wasn’t an accident that shouldn’t be here, but a carefully designed part of how God made the world.