Rhett Butler News

Transitioning to a non-profit model means that I'm spending less and less time working in the field these days, but I still managed take some photos in 2013, adding more…

Also see our Top 10 HAPPY environmental stories of 2013. Elephant in South Africa. The poaching crisis in Africa is number six on our annual top ten list. Photo by:…

Deforestation for an oil palm plantation in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. Photos by Rhett A. Butler. Wilmar, the world's largest palm oil trader and a long-time target of environmentalists, has signed…

The map does not distinguish between natural forests and plantations, but the underlying database will support the development of additional layers, which can be used to create masks for oil…

Malaysia had the world's highest rate of forest loss between 2000 and 2012, according to a new global forest map developed in partnership with Google. Malaysia's total forest loss during…

Forest loss in Indonesia has sharply risen over the past 12 years, reports a new study published in the journal Science. The study, led by Matt Hansen of University of…

Environmental initiatives that target zero net deforestation may miss their mark when it comes to slowing climate change and protecting biodiversity, warns a commentary published in this week's issue of…

Researchers today released a long-awaited tool that reveals the extent of forest cover loss and gain on a global scale. Powered by Google's massive computing cloud, the interactive forest map…

Palm plantations expanding at 7% per year across Malaysia and Indonesia Some 3.5 million hectares (8.7 million acres) of forest in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Papua New Guinea was converted for…

Palm oil giant Golden-Agri Resources (GAR) will forgo development of an oil palm plantation in an area of rainforest in Indonesian New Guinea in order to comply with its forest…

A breeding population of a critically endangered harlequin toad thought to be extinct in Costa Rica has been discovered in a tract of highland forest in the Central American country,…

Last week the Mongabay.org board unanimously voted in favor of a motion to shift Mongabay's news production — news.mongabay.com — from the traditional for-profit entity to the non-profit organization formed…

Río Huepetuhe gold mine in Peru in the Peruvian Amazon. Photo by Rhett A. Butler The extent of gold mining in the Peruvian Amazon has surged 400 percent since 1999…

Illegal logging remains pervasive in the Brazilian state of Pará, finds an assessment released Monday by Imazon. Analyzing satellite data and records from Pará's environmental agency Sema, the Brazil-based NGO…

Oil palm plantations have been rapidly expanding across the tropics for the better part of the past twenty years due to high returns from palm oil production. But palm oil…

Erik Hoffner is an environmental journalist and photographer whose work has appeared in a wide range of publications, including Orion, The Sun, Northern Woodlands, Yale Environment 360, Earth Island Journal,…

One of the coolest endeavors I've come across in recent years of reporting has been the effort to develop "conservation drones" — model aircraft that are now being used to…

Nearly two-thirds of villagers surveyed across rainforests in Indonesian and Malaysian Borneo are against large-scale deforestation due to the adverse impacts on livelihoods and the environment, finds a comprehensive new…

When I launched Mongabay in 1999 I had no idea it would grow into what it is today: a site that draws more than 2.5 million visitors per month and…

Deforestation for an oil palm plantation in Central Kalimantan in 2013. Photo by Rhett A. Butler.. Reclassifying logging concessions as permanent forest estates and thereby barring them from conversion to…

Data released this week by Terra-i, a collaborative mapping initiative, shows that deforestation in Ecuador for the first three months of 2013 was pacing more than 300 percent ahead of…

An excavator at the rainforest's edge in recently cleared peatland within the Duta Palma group's PT. Bertuah Aneka Yasa palm oil concession in Indragiri Hulu, Riau. Taken 05/04/2013 © Kemal…

My apologies for the lack of blog updates. Between long-term projects and building up Mongabay.org--the non-profit arm of Mongabay--I haven't had the opportunity to post lately. However I'm happy to…

Palm oil being used to perpetuate fraud, land-grabbing in Papua New Guinea Developers are seeking palm oil concessions to as a means to circumvent restrictions on industrial logging in Papua…

Oil palm plantations have extinguished the last habitat of a rainforest tree in Malaysia, reports the New Straits Times. Last week the Forest Research Institute Malaysia (FRIM), a state agency,…

Engaging the general public on issues like extinction, climate change, habitat destruction, and pollution can be a challenge due to the generally downbeat nature of environmental problems. But an illustrator…

A near real-time deforestation monitoring system will soon cover all the world's tropical forests, report the researchers behind the initiative. Terra-i — a collaborative project between Colombia's International Center for…

A team of Malaysian and American researchers have mapped the genome of the oil palm, the oilseed that is widely used as a cooking oil and in cosmetics, cleaning products,…

Madagascar's first people may not have driven the island's largest animals to extinction, suggests new study. New research indicates that Madagascar was occupied some 2,500 years earlier than previously established.…

Deforestation has fallen in Congo Basin countries over the past decade despite a sharp increase in the rate of forest clearing in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, according to…