Articles by Rhett Butler

Parrots around the globe are captured and sold as pets in a thriving illegal market that has carried more than 19 million birds across borders since 1975. The deadly beak…

Drug-sniffing dogs are an accepted part of our modern world. In the near future, could pollution-sniffing mosses be equally common? Although plants seem inactive compared to animals, a team led…

Sharks shed bits of themselves into the ocean constantly. Scientists can now use DNA in these bits to monitor whether white sharks – commonly called great whites – are swimming…

The highly toxic brown tree snake, which has killed off most of the native birds on the Pacific island of Guam, was once thought to have its own distinctive venom.…

Tropical forests are incredibly diverse ecosystems, and ecologists have long wondered why. New research studying a specific Panamanian tree – the yellow-flowering Handroanthus guayacan – has provided an answer. But…

Forest monitoring has experienced a revolution in recent years, with vast improvements in satellite sensors, the emergence of drones, and growing ubiquity of on-the-ground technologies like smartphones and camera traps.…

The impact of plastic on the world's oceans has been garnering a lot of attention of late, with consumer products companies, governments, and restaurants chains making high profile commitments ranging…

Deforestation in Earth's biggest rainforest reached the highest level in a decade, reports the Brazilian government. On Friday Brazil's national space research institute INPE released its annual preliminary estimate of…

The largest carnivorous mammal of tropical America – the King of Beasts of the Amazon rainforest – is the jaguar. Found from the deserts of the American southwest as far…

Data released separately by civil society and the Brazilian government shows that deforestation is continuing to climb in Earth's largest rainforest. On Monday, Imazon, a Brazilian NGO, published its monthly…

Some corals look like giant boulders, others like branching trees—anything but what they actually are: animals. That is, unless you are lucky enough to see coral at night, when their…

On October 10th the world lost an unlikely conservation hero: Bill Wood, a trapper who turned his expertise to save scores of species from extinction. Bill was 84. A third…

Sure, you may know that bats echolocate to control insect populations, but bats have other offbeat super powers. According to fossil records, bats have been around for at least 50…

Scientists searching for snake-like amphibians discovered a new species of swamp eel living in the rainforest of northeastern India. According to a paper published in the journal of Ichthyological Exploration…

Large landscapes of intact tropical forests will figure prominently in global strategies to avert catastrophic climate change and conserve biodiversity. In this context, the extensive forests of Papua and West…

Newly released analysis of satellite data by Imazon, a Brazilian NGO, shows that deforestation in the Amazon is continuing to climb ahead of the country's presidential election. Imazon's deforestation alert…

New research suggests humans reached Madagascar far earlier than previously thought. The study, published today in the journal Science Advances, is based on analysis of giant elephant bird bones discovered…

A group of 17 philanthropic foundations has committed at least $459 million through 2022 in support of land-based solutions to climate change — including forest conservation and restoration — and…

On the morning of March 1, 1954, the United States tested its largest thermonuclear bomb over Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Code-named “Castle Bravo”, the explosion was more than…

As governors of tropical forest states and provinces descend upon San Francisco for the Global Climate Action Summit and the annual meeting of the Governors’ Climate and Forests Task Force,…