A lucky child: Mongabay’s origin story (insider)
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…
Articles by Rhett A. Butler
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.
Earth has more trees now than 35 years ago
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…
The tropics are in trouble, warn scientists
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…
Top forestry official out in Malaysia
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,…
Deforestation skyrockets in the Amazon rainforest
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…
How blockchain gaming could benefit wildlife conservation
Blockchain has been one of the hottest sectors in tech over the past couple of years, with cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum soaring in value as they captured the public's…
Facebook video shows orangutan defending forest against bulldozer
Dramatic footage released last week by an animal welfare group shows a wild orangutan trying in vain to fight off destruction of its rainforest habitat in Borneo. The video (below),…
A global coral reef monitoring system is coming soon
Coral reef conservation efforts will soon get a major boost with a global monitoring system that will detect physical changes in coral cover at high resolution on a daily basis,…
Rainforests: the year in review 2017
Between America's abandonment of leadership on conservation and environmental policy, Brazil's backtracking on forest conservation, massive forest fires worldwide, and the revelation of a sharp increase in global forest loss…
Mapping how to feed 9 billion humans, while avoiding environmental calamity
Yesterday The Leonardo Dicaprio Foundation unveiled an ambitious plan to protect and connect 50 percent of the world’s land area as part of a broader effort to curb global warming,…
Deforestation drops 16% in the Brazilian Amazon
Deforestation in the world's largest rainforest declined over the past year, reports the Brazilian government. According to preliminary data from Brazil's national space agency INPE, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon…
One man’s quest to save the world’s wildest places: Hansjörg Wyss
In the late 1950s, a young graduate student from Switzerland named Hansjörg Wyss took a summer job with the Colorado Highway Department. In his free time, he explored, climbed, and…
Transforming business as usual in Indonesia: an interview with Aida Greenbury
Perhaps no forestry company operating in Indonesia was more controversial from the late 1990s to the early 2010s in environmental circles than Asia Pulp & Paper (APP). Throughout that period,…
Borneo’s ‘biocultural holocaust’: an interview with author Alex Shoumatoff
Over the past half century, we've laid waste to the rainforests of Borneo. Fed by our insatiable demand for food, fuel, and fiber, vast tracts of cathedral-like landscape across the…
What happens when the soy and palm oil boom ends?
Over the past thirty years demand and production of oils crops like oil palm and soybeans has boomed across the tropics thanks to rising incomes, macroeconomic changes and government policies,…
What to expect for rainforests in 2017
While 2016 lacked the drama of Indonesia's 2015 fire and haze crisis, surging deforestation in Earth's largest rainforest and ongoing destruction of forests for industrial plantations meant that it was…
The year in tropical rainforests: 2016
Massive forest fires in the Congo and Amazon, surging deforestation in Brazil, and tentative steps toward reform in Indonesia and Myanmar: there were no shortage of major happenings in tropical…
Brazil: deforestation in the Amazon increased 29% over last year
Deforestation in the world's largest rainforest jumped 29 percent over last year, representing a sharp increase over the historically low deforestation rate seen just five years ago and the highest…
Could REDD help save an embattled forest in Cambodia?
ver the past three decades, few countries lost forest cover faster than Cambodia: over a quarter of the country's forests were cleared since 1990. Much of that destruction was driven…
Recognizing environmentalists under threat
It is well documented that our planet, along with its biodiversity and life-sustaining resources, is severely threatened. Lesser known is that some of the bravest among us, our environmental defenders,…
Special series
Endangered environmentalists
- Fighting to save an endangered ape, Indonesian activists fear for their lives
- Iran sentences eight conservationists convicted of spying
- Watchdog denounces arrests of four anti-mining activists in Indonesia
Indonesias forest guardians
- Reforesting a village in Indonesia, one batch of gourmet beans at a time
- Restoring Sumatra’s Leuser Ecosystem, one small farm at a time
- Indigenous Iban community defends rainforests, but awaits lands rights recognition
Amazon infrastructure
- Catastrophic Amazon tipping point less than 30 years away: study
- Amazon’s Munduruku stage daring Christmas raid to recover sacred urns
- Belo Monte boondoggle: Brazil’s biggest, costliest dam may be unviable
Asian rhinos
- Indonesian officials wield sharia law in defense of Sumatran rhinos
- Love triangle complicates efforts to breed Sumatran rhinos
- Indonesia to capture 3 wild Sumatran rhinos to add to breeding population
