Articles by Rhett A. Butler

Leap Day only happens every four years but when the next one comes around, the planet may have lost a few more frog species: amphibians are the most endangered group…

Mongabay was born out of my love for rainforests so for this Valentine's day, I'm doing something a little different: posting a bunch of my favorite rainforest photos from the…

Peat fires burned 293,065 hectares of land within concessions managed by Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) suppliers during last year's haze crisis, an area amounting to 37 percent of its…

Indonesian President Joko Widodo has appointed conservationist Nazir Foead to head up a newly-created peatland restoration agency, which aims to resurrect peatlands devastated by recent fires. The establishment of the…

Between Indonesia's massive forest fires, the official approval of REDD+ at climate talks in Paris, and the establishment of several major national parks, there was plenty to get excited about…

More than 50 plantation companies are being punished or investigated by the Indonesian for fires linked to the choking haze that polluted skies across Southeast Asia this fall. A week…

Between the landmark climate agreement signed in Paris in December 2015, Indonesia's fire and haze crisis of the late summer and early fall, and continuing adoption of zero deforestation policies…

In 2015 Mongabay published nearly 1,300 news stories in English and over 600 articles in Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, German, Japanese, and Chinese. Mongabay-Indonesia posted over 1,800 stories in Indonesian.…

Christmas has come early for some of the planet's most endangered animals: the Malaysian state of Sabah has established a 68,000-hectare rainforest reserve that houses orangutans, elephants, and clouded leopards,…

Since early 2014, prices for most commodities produced in the tropics have plunged. Palm oil is down by 40 percent, logs from Malaysia and Cameroon are off by roughly a…

The Norwegian government has extended its multi-billion dollar forest protection initiative. At the Paris climate convention on Friday, Norwegian Minister of Environment and Climate Tine Sundtoft said the country would…

If world leaders are serious about addressing climate change, staving off the sixth great extinction, and raising living standards of the world's rural poor, they must 'stop the burning' of…

Deforestation jumped 16 percent in the Brazilian Amazon to 5,831 square kilometers for the year ended July 31, 2015, but still remained well below historical levels, according to data released…

Protecting, restoring, and better managing tropical forests could provide as much as half the net carbon emissions required to meet a 2-degree Celsius climate target, argues a commentary published this…

Another prominent environmentalist has been killed in Peru. On Thursday night, Alfredo Ernesto Vracko Neuenschwander, a woodworker who led a movement to resist forest invasions by illegal gold miners in…

In a decision that environmentalists say sets a “dangerous precedent” against efforts to stop trafficking in illegal timber, a court in Singapore has okayed the release of a large shipment…

See our feature article on Sierra del Divisor: ‘A critical gift': Peru rejoices as a new national park is born After more than a decade of discussion and planning, Peru…

Author's note 10/23/15: the status of the golden-crowned langur is now being challenged by some primatologists, who say the photographed individuals used for the description may have been bleached by…

This week data from Guido van der Werf of the Global Fire Emissions Database showed that carbon emissions from fires raging across Indonesia's peatlands have surpassed 1.4 billion tons of…

Greenhouse gas emissions from peat fires in Borneo and Sumatra are currently exceeding emissions from the entire U.S. economy, putting Indonesia on track to be one of the world's largest…