- Mongabay implemented a moratorium on reporting-related travel in mid-March due to the pandemic.
- Accordingly, the opportunities to take photos this year were limited, mostly to a pre-pandemic trip to the Amazon and pictures captured locally in California.
- This set includes 35 of Mongabay Founder Rhett A. Butler’s drone photos from the year.
- This post is insider content, which is available to paying subscribers. All insider content is temporarily available to everyone.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we implemented a travel moratorium for staff and contributing journalists in March 2020. In practice, this meant we stopped assigning stories that required travel and strongly dissuaded journalists from undertaking reporting trips for Mongabay. We did this because we recognize travel puts journalists at great potential risk of contracting the disease as well as becoming vectors for spreading the virus to the communities they visit, especially isolated indigenous communities. Our international network of contributors and staffed enabled us to be responsive as local conditions changed in certain geographies however.
This policy meant my only international travel occurred pre-pandemic, when I met with Mongabay-Latam in Colombia and did a short visit to the Colombia-Brazil-Peru border region in the Amazon. Therefore most of the nature drone highlights presented below are either from that trip or close to my home in California.
I hope you enjoy.
