Our most popular stories of 2018

2018 was a record-setting traffic year for Mongabay, topping 100 million views in direct readership and video watches for the first time. Both our Spanish-language bureau and our core English-language news bureau shattered previous highs in terms of visitors and pageviews. We also added our India bureau in 2018, which surpassed our audience expectations.

Overall we produced 1,495 articles for the main news section; 1,672 in Indonesian; 815 in Spanish; 338 in English by the India bureau; 116 in Portuguese; 92 in Italian; 72 in French, 36 in Chinese; 23 in German; and 2 in Japanese.

With the caveat that the articles which get the most traffic aren’t necessarily the most deeply reported stories, below are lists of our most popular articles published in 2018. The article view counts only refer to traffic on our web site, not readership of our stories within mobile apps, on social media platforms, or published on third party web sites under Creative Commons.

10 most popular posts published in 2018 on Mongabay News

1. Drone used to confirm existence of uncontacted Amazon tribe (video)
(Author: Mongabay.com) A short story about the Brazilian government using a drone to help confirm the presence of an uncontacted indigenous group deep in the Amazon rainforest was our most popular post published in 2018 with 683,000 pageviews on our web site. FUNAI, Brazil’s indigenous affairs agency, undertook an expedition to an area near the Brazilian border with Peru to confirm the presence of voluntarily isolated peoples along the Juruazinho River. To confirm the presence of the group without encroaching on their territory, FUNAI flew a drone over the forest and photographed huts and crops amid a section of felled trees.
 

2. Epic battle between tiger and sloth bear caught on film
(Author: Mongabay.com) Footage of a fight between a male tiger and a mother sloth bear in an India wildlife reserve went viral on Facebook and was one of our most read stories in 2018 with 558,000 pageviews. The video was captured by Akshay Kumar, the chief naturalist at Bamboo Forest Safari Lodge in Maharashtra. It starts with the tiger chasing off a sloth bear that was headed with her cub toward a water body. The bear then charges the tiger and the fight ensues.
 

3. Facebook video shows orangutan defending forest against bulldozer
(Author: Mongabay.com) Dramatic footage released in June 2018 by International Animal Rescue (IAR) group showed a wild orangutan trying in vain to fight off destruction of its rainforest home in Borneo. The video, filmed in 2013 but posted on Facebook on June 5th for World Environment Day by IAR, was shot in Sungai Putri, a tract of forest in Indonesia’s West Kalimantan province. Sungai Putri is one of the most important refuges for orangutans left in Indonesian Borneo. Our post attracted 436,000 pageviews.
 

4. Slave labor found at Starbucks-certified Brazil coffee plantation
(Author: Daniela Penha) An investigation done in conjunction with Brazil Repórter Brasil reported on a raid by Brazil’s Labor Ministry of a coffee plantation in Minas Gerais, which was alleging holding workers in conditions analogous to slavery. The plantation held the C.A.F.E. Practices certification, owned by Starbucks in partnership with SCS Global Services. After hearing of the raid, the two companies responsible for issuing the seal said they would review the farm’s quality certificate. Starbucks says it hasn’t bought coffee from the farm in recent years.
 

5. Decoding the language of bats key to their conservation
(Author: Javier Lyonnet) This WildTech story reported on a new artificial intelligence algorithm developed by Uruguayan scientists that enables acoustic monitoring of bats.
 

6. Camera trap videos capture biodiversity of conservation area in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula
(Author: Mike Gaworecki) This article reports on a ejido’s camera trapping program used to monitor biodiversity levels in Quintana Roo on Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula.
 

7. With a feast of grubs, a tribe makes its case for forest stewardship
(Author: Hans Nicholas Jong) This reporting is based on a visit to the Kombai tribe of Indonesia’s Papua region, who are seeking recognition of their right to manage their ancestral lands in a bid to thwart the encroachment of oil palm plantations in the last great expanse of unspoiled wilderness in the country.
 

Over 8. $720 million in profit from tourism in Peru’s protected natural areas
(Author: Alexa Eunoé Vélez Zuazo | Translated by Caitlin Hackett) This story, adapted from a Mongabay-Latam post, reports on a study published by the Conservation Strategy Fund, which found tourism in Peru’s natural protected areas created 36,000 jobs and generated $720 million in revenue in 2017.
 

9. Int’l protections not stopping pangolin overexploitation in Cameroon
(Author: John C. Cannon) This story covers a report finding that a 2016 ban on the international trade of pangolins into protecting the anteater-like animal at the local level in Central Africa.
 

10. Fang trafficking to China is putting Bolivia’s jaguars in jeopardy
(Author: Roberto Navia | Translated by Sarah Engel) Produced under the Latin American Wildlife Trade series, this investigative piece first produced in Spanish looks at the trade in Jaguar teeth in Bolivia.
 

10 most popular posts published in 2018 on Mongabay-India

1. Basking blues: intruding tourists disrupt basking in the Indian rock python
2. Domestic dog: Is our best friend a foe for wildlife?
3. [VIDEO] Maternal instinct: sloth bear vs tiger
4. Scientists describe new species of shieldtail snakes found in Anaikatti hills
5. Chilika Lake emerges as single largest habitat of Irrawaddy dolphins in the world
6. This draft national forest policy too gives short shrift to grasslands
7. A new species of blind cave-dwelling fish in Meghalaya
8. Environmental DNA analysis: Detecting invasive fish with a cup of water
9. For communities living around forests, nature is the fundamental insurance
10. Gentle giants suffer for tourists in Goa

10 most popular posts published in 2018 on Mongabay-Latam

1. VÍDEO: Épica batalla entre un tigre y un oso bezudo que protege a su cachorro
2. Un comportamiento extraño: la nueva especie de gecko que se “desnuda” para escapar
3. Ecuador: Waoranis del Pastaza graban a los increíbles animales que viven en sus bosques
4. Depredador amenazado: 18 perturbadores imágenes sobre el comercio con aletas de tiburón
5. 5 animales increíbles que conocimos este 2018
6. Tres increíbles historias sobre los peces de la Amazonía de Bolivia
7. México: los 7 reportajes más importantes del 2017
8. Galápagos: “Los vientres de tiburones hembra preñadas fueron cortados y los bebés puestos en sacos aparte”
9. Un terremoto en Alaska desencadena el desove de los peces más raros del mundo a miles de kilómetros
10. Grandes sorpresas que registraron las cámaras trampa

10 most popular posts published in 2018 on Mongabay-Portuguese

1. Legado de Belo Monte: danos causados pela usina na Amazônia não terminaram após sua construção (história fotográfica) – Notícias ambientais
2. Sapos Cururus estão matando crocodilos na Austrália – Notícias ambientais
3. Relatório:Rompimento da barragem de rejeitos de mineração é a principal causa de desastres ambientais – Notícias ambientais
4. Maduro quer liquidar os recursos naturais da Venezuela para se livrar da análise de dívidas – Notícias ambientais
5. Documentário destaca a relação da indústria pecuária com o desmatamento da Amazônia – Notícias ambientais
6. Eleições brasileiras e o meio ambiente: posição dos principais candidatos – Notícias ambientais
7. Tempestade política do Brasil impulsiona o desmatamento da Amazônia – Notícias ambientais
8. Críticos afirmam: Blairo Maggi, o rei da soja, reina absoluto sobre o destino da Amazônia – Notícias ambientais
9. Brasil 2018: A Amazônia sob ataque: cresce a resistência, a ação dos tribunais e as eleições – Notícias ambientais
10. Floresta tropical amazônica tem estações secas e chuvosas – Notícias ambientais

5 most popular video posts published in 2018

1. After learning how oil contamination has affected other indigenous communities, the Waorani people from Pastaza province in Ecuador plan to challenge a possible drilling concession in their own Amazonian territory using a strategy they call “spear and law.”
2. For Rohingya refugees fleeing persecution, elephants pose a new threat
3. A new study suggests that Bornean elephants been in Borneo since the end of the Pleistocene, around 11,000 to 18,000 years ago, when Borneo was part of a much larger land mass.
4. In April of this year, 19 families were ordered to vacate the homes they’d lived in for more than a decade, and also forced to leave behind their croplands and livestock. Compounding the sense of injustice residents felt, the man driving their eviction is accused of murdering a community member in 2010.
5. Thirty-six vultures, including those belonging to two critically endangered species, were killed in an alleged illegal bait-poisoning incident in Assam, India