Rhett Butler News

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…

Bulldozer at a conventional logging site in Borneo Eighty percent of the rainforests in Malaysian Borneo have been heavily impacted by logging, finds a comprehensive study that offers the first assessment…

Call recognition for animals. New technology makes it possible to automatically identify species by their vocalizations. The software and hardware system, detailed in the current issue of the journal PeerJ,…

Rights activists are warning that a proposal to classify islands forming in the midst of the Bakun Dam reservoir will further deprive indigenous forest people of their traditional land. The…

World Growth International, a group that lobbies on behalf of industrial forestry and palm oil companies, is clouding the origin of the fires that triggered 'haze' air pollution alerts across…

Last week I had the opportunity to visit the Costa Rican Amphibian Research Center (CRARC) outside of Siquirres in Limón Province, Costa Rica. I'll be doing a feature story on…

Gone are the days where I can spend a week trekking in the forest without communication, letting Mongabay.com run itself. But the good news (or bad news, depending on how…

Rainforests in South America have endured three previous extreme global warming events in the past, suggesting they will survive a projected 2-6 degree rise in temperatures over the coming century,…

Data from NAA's Landsat 8 is now freely available, enabling researchers and the general public to access images captured by the satellite within twelve hours of reception. The data is…

When most people think of rainforests, the first thing that comes to mind is tropical rainforests like those found in the Amazon, Borneo, and the Congo. But rainforests also exist…

Yesterday I gave a talk at Cisco Systems in San Jose on "How Technology is Helping Save Rainforests". Here's a brief recap. After giving background on Mongabay, I provided a…

A hundred years ago, nature-oriented travel to places like tropical Africa and Asia was often associated with big game hunting. Today cameras have mostly replaced guns as nature-lovers travel to…

Satellite analysis by a Brazil-based NGO indicates that deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon continues to pace well ahead of last year, when the government passed a weakened version of its…

Court ruling invalidates Indonesian govt's claim to customary forest areas In a landmark ruling, Indonesia's Constitutional Court has invalidated the Indonesian government's claim to millions of hectares of forest land,…

Indonesian palm oil giant Golden Agri-Resources (GAR) is continuing to reduce deforestation under its 2011 forest conservation policy despite ongoing forest destruction by other palm oil producers in the sector,…

One of the highlights of traveling to exotic places is seeing mother animals with their babies, so here is a collection of some pictures I've taken over the years. They…

As the public comment period for California's cap-and-trade program draws to a close, an alliance of environmental activists have stepped up a heated campaign to keep carbon credits generated by…

NOTE: This post refers to starting up an organization in a marginal niche market: environmental media. The advice may not apply if you're working in a potentially lucrative sector like…

Every month I tally the most popular articles on the news section. It should come as no surprise that the most popular articles are usually the ones that have done…

On my way back from the visit to the Katingan peat swamp in Central Kalimantan, I stayed a night at the "Eco Village" that is part of the Rungan Sari…

Just over a year ago, the Indonesian-language version of Mongabay went live (the official launch was May 19. 2012, but the site was live before that). Mongabay.co.id was the first…

In recent days several readers have asked about the status of the pictures from Aceh and Kalimantan I took last month. Well the pictures are all technically online, but aren't…

In November 2012 I had an amazing opportunity to do a flyover of parts of Sabah in Malaysian Borneo. We went from Sandakan to the Danum Valley Research Center, flying…

Indonesian palm oil companies would support land swaps as a means to reduce carbon emissions from deforestation while simultaneously expanding production, representatives from the country's largest association of palm oil…

The palm oil industry in Indonesia gets a lot of criticism these days from civil society on issues ranging from deforestation, pollution, wildlife-killing, to social conflict. Writing for Mongabay, I…

A Toronto Stock Exchange-listed mining company has hired an official being investigated for corruption under its effort to convince the Aceh provincial government to re-zone protected forest areas for a…

While directly reducing greenhouse gas emissions is a far more effective approach to fighting climate change than "offsetting" them by buying carbon credits, I readily acknowledge that I'm presently not…

A Toronto-listed mining company says it is working closely with the Indonesian government to strip the protected status of some 1.2 million hectares of forest on the island of Sumatra.…

There is a common misconception that my reporting trips are sponsored by NGOs, state tourism boards, or other entities. In fact, I fund Mongabay.com-related travel through revenue generated via advertising…

I'm frequently asked how I go about making my travel arrangements. Well the answer is it takes a great deal of time to research and make logistical arrangements for some…