Mongabay has grown substantially since its inception in 1999, rising from a one-person rainforest website to a multinational news organization with hundreds of staff and over 1,000 contributing journalists. We’ve come a long way thanks to our newsroom’s capacity to deliver original journalism that drives tangible impact. But the scale of the planetary challenges we face as a global community requires continued expansion channeled toward places and topics where Mongabay’s work can fill a significant gap.

Mongabay’s strategy has always been based on the idea that journalism can contribute to real-world results by raising awareness about the importance of nature, generating opportunities for accountability for environmental destruction and inspiring people to work toward solutions. We’ve focused on geographies where biodiversity is high, threats are acute, issues are relevant to our core coverage strengths and there are legal frameworks under which credible journalism can operate.

In 2012, Mongabay.org was registered as a nonprofit to facilitate the development of new education and journalism initiatives, and leverage Mongabay’s existing network, traffic, and reputation under a sustainable business model. Mongabay.org aims to improve understanding of the concurrent global scale forces undermining the health of Earth’s systems. While the organization became Mongabay.org, the news service continues to live on Mongabay.com.

The first project under Mongabay.org was the launch of Mongabay.co.id, an Indonesian environmental news service run by a team of Indonesian journalists. Following its success, Mongabay launched a regional Spanish-language bureau, Mongabay Latam, in 2016, Mongabay India in 2018, the Portuguese-language Mongabay Brasil in 2019, and Mongabay Hindi in 2020. Most recently, in 2023 Mongabay launched the Mongabay Africa bureau and the Mongabay Data Studio in 2024.

In this context, Mongabay’s strategy is to assemble a collaborative journalism network at national, regional and global scales to help meet the challenge during this pivotal decade. Our 2030 strategy describes how we intend to build on Mongabay’s strengths and successes to scale up our capacity to deliver on our mission of conveying information in a compelling format in a relevant time frame to critical audiences that shape policy and influence global trends. We’ve organized this plan around five strategic objectives critical to enabling Mongabay to contribute toward alleviating the planetary emergency. Evidence that this strategy to bring reliable information to the public is working includes the numerous awards our team wins, from the Trace Prize for Investigative Reporting to the Society of Publishers in Asia Award and the Biophilia Award for Environmental Communication, the world’s most prestigious prize for coverage of biodiversity issues.

By realizing this strategy, Mongabay will meaningfully engage a global community brought together by a shared affinity for nature, mobilize a journalism network capable of gathering information from some of the world’s more remote corners via local sources and revealed in Earth observation data, expose hidden drivers of environmental destruction through investigative reporting on corruption and illegality, and sustainably provide professional opportunities for journalists to improve their skills and earn a decent and dignified living.