In recent weeks, some media outlets have run eye-popping headlines on rising deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon: "Deforestation of Brazilian Amazon surges to record high" read a June 4th headline…
Borneo has been special to me since my earliest years. As a kid, I would voraciously read books about the wilds of Borneo, with its dense rainforests inhabited by traditional…
The island of Borneo is renowned by scientists for its biological bounty. From orangutans to pygmy elephants to towering dipterocarp trees, the forests of the world's third largest island are…
To honor Jane Goodall, the City of Los Angeles declared her 85th birthday, April 3, 2019, to be “Dr. Jane Goodall Day” and hosted a ceremony where the conservation icon…
War, drugs, corruption, and terrorism are terms Westerners are more likely to associate with Afghanistan than biodiversity conservation. But Alex Dehgan, a conservation technologist who runs the Washington D.C.-based Conservation…
ÑUFLO DE CHÁVEZ, Bolivia — Few countries in the tropics have seen their trees chopped down as quickly as Bolivia did between 2001 and 2017. According to data from the…
One of the most popular tourist destinations in East Africa is Kenya’s Maasai Mara,. The Maasai Mara, a tract of savanna, is famous for its abundant wildlife, especially large populations…
2018 wasn't a great year for tropical rainforests, with major conservation setbacks in Brazil, Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, and the United States coming on top of back-to-back years of…
As I described in the origin story post, Mongabay had a very modest beginning. I never had any intention of making a living, let alone a career, out of running…
2018 was a difficult year for the world's tropical rainforests. Below are of some of the biggest rainforest storylines for the year, but we couldn't cover everything, so if there…
It is easy to forget that change starts with one person. In a world that is increasingly connected through mobile phones and the internet, especially social media, it is easier…
Suriname is a country few people have heard of, let alone visited. Located in the northeast corner of South America, Suriname is almost completely covered in rainforest. It has the…
Madagascar also has great frogs, but what fascinated me about the island was a more unusual type of beast: the chameleon. Since the first time I laid eyes on a…
Madagascar has been called the “Great Red Island,” and from space, astronauts have remarked it looks like it is bleeding to death. Soil conditions and poorly vegetated hillsides mean Madagascar…
Frogs are incredible creatures. Usually born in water, most live the first stages of their life essentially as a fish, before undergoing a radical metamorphosis that transforms them into an…
One of the few benefits of having a father who had to fly each week from San Francisco to meet clients in Hawaii and Alaska during my formative years was…
Despite ongoing deforestation, fires, drought-induced die-offs, and insect outbreaks, the world's tree cover actually increased by 2.24 million square kilometers — an area the size of Texas and Alaska combined…
Plants and animals in the tropics are disproportionately threatened by a range of dangers, including habitat loss, overexploitation, and climate change, warn researchers writing in the journal Nature. Conducting an…
A top official is out of his post as head of Sabah's forestry department, which oversees forests in the Malaysian state on the island of Borneo. According to press reports,…
Data from a Brazilian forest monitoring group suggests deforestation is surging in the world's largest rainforest, with last month's rate of forest loss in the Amazon hitting the highest level…
Rhett Butler is the founder and CEO of Mongabay. Rhett founded Mongabay out of his passion for wildlife and wild places. He has traveled widely in the tropics and enjoys photography, hiking, and scuba-diving.
