Rhett Ayers Butler
The North Atlantic can look empty until someone begins paying attention. A stretch of gray water off Newfoundland may appear to hold little more than waves and scattered birds. To Bill Montevecchi, those birds were evidence. Their breeding success, feeding trips, and changing numbers revealed what was happening beneath the surface, offering clues about fish [Continue reading]
For protected areas in the Brazilian Amazon, one basic question is often overlooked: is there enough money to manage what lies inside the boundary? A reserve may exist in law. It may appear on maps and in official counts of how much of Brazil is under protection. On the ground, management depends on staff, fuel, [Continue reading]
In the Amazon, a forest can remain on the map while losing much of what makes it function. Deforestation, carbon, protected areas, and tipping points are useful measures, but they do not fully explain why biodiversity continues to decline where laws exist, territories are recognized, and international pledges sound ambitious. Six gaps help explain the [Continue reading]
Ahead of this week’s Philanthropy Asia Summit, Thomas Knudsen and I published a commentary in the Business Times on Singapore’s outsized role in the future of the ocean Debates about ocean protection tend to focus on treaties, national policies, and international agreements. Fisheries quotas are negotiated between governments. Shipping rules are set through global bodies. [Continue reading]
Environmental decisions are often made with too little reliable information. Forests are cleared, fisheries depleted, Indigenous territories threatened, and carbon projects approved or financed before the public fully understands what is at stake. In many places, the problem is not only weak policy or poor enforcement. It is also a lack of trustworthy reporting, public [Continue reading]
Mongabay has in recent months published a series examining the well-being of people working to protect the planet, including the mental health of conservationists. A perspective published by a group of early-career practitioners is both a response to that coverage and a contribution to it. Drawing on interviews with more than 100 young professionals across [Continue reading]
Before launching a monitoring program, practitioners are usually asked how data will be gathered, which indicators will be tracked, and how results will be analyzed. Less often, they are asked what the monitoring is meant to do. A recent paper led by Kate Helmstedt argues that this question should come first. Monitoring is most useful [Continue reading]
This is the pre-edited version of Earth Day is for the planet. What about the people protecting it?, which was published today on Nonprofit Quarterly. Every Earth Day, we are urged to care more deeply about the planet—to pay closer attention, to look more carefully, to resist indifference. For many, that is a one-day appeal. [Continue reading]
“Let us stop talking about human-wildlife conflict. Some of us live with this reality and we pay a heavy price for sharing space with wildlife.” The remark, made at the 2023 Community-led Conservation Congress in Namibia, challenges how conservation is often described. The term “human-wildlife conflict” appears frequently in policy and reporting, suggesting a problem [Continue reading]
April 3 now carries a different kind of weight. It was always Jane Goodall’s birthday. Now it is also a marker—a point in the year when people are asked not just to remember her, but to do something with what she began. The idea behind the first Jane Goodall Day is simple. Take one action. [Continue reading]
The gunfire began just before six in the morning. At first, Christine Lain thought it might be a drill. Upemba National Park had prepared for attacks before. But the sound did not stop. It intensified. By the end of the day, three rangers and four staff were dead. Survivors hid in a crawl space while [Continue reading]
On paper, the ocean is increasingly protected. Governments have designated large marine protected areas (MPAs) and committed to conserving 30% of the sea by 2030. Maps suggest progress. Offshore, little has changed. Industrial vessels continue to fish in restricted waters, and penalties remain inconsistent. The issue is not new rules, but whether existing ones are [Continue reading]
“Your work is not a priority for us.” This is one of the most common responses I hear from philanthropic foundations. Silence is more common still. I understand why a foundation might decline to fund a particular organization or project. What concerns me is a broader pattern: philanthropy consistently underinvests in the information ecosystem that [Continue reading]
America’s national parks were conceived as refuges from the forces reshaping the continent. Climate change is breaching that boundary. A study in Conservation Letters suggests many parks are not merely warming but being pushed toward ecological states unlike those they were created to preserve. Researchers assessed 259 park units across the contiguous United States using [Continue reading]
Debates about ocean protection tend to focus on national governments and treaties. Fisheries quotas, shipping rules, and marine reserves are negotiated by states. Yet much of what determines ocean health flows through cities. Ports control entry. Municipal buyers decide what seafood is served in public institutions. Urban air-quality rules shape how ships operate at berth. [Continue reading]
In Washington, scrutiny is a familiar condition of public life. Yet even by that standard, the recent exchange between the House Committee on Natural Resources and the Center for Biological Diversity has a distinctly uneasy tone. What began as congressional oversight of litigation over major resource projects has broadened into sweeping requests for internal communications, [Continue reading]
In the wake of Australia’s 2019–20 “Black Summer” bushfires, few questions have proved as persistent as how to coexist with fire on a warming continent. Governments promise resilience, communities demand safety, and industries facing shrinking markets search for new roles. Out of this convergence has emerged a flashpoint: the thinning of native forests. Mechanical thinning [Continue reading]
For decades, a dominant argument for protecting forests has focused on carbon. Trees absorb carbon dioxide, store it in wood and soils, and slow the accumulation of greenhouse gases. A new scientific review argues this emphasis overlooks other ways forests shape climate and human well-being. Forests are not only a mitigation tool for the future [Continue reading]
For most of the 20th century, the fate of whales was treated as an industrial question. How many could be taken, how fast, and by whom. Biology entered the discussion late. Ethics later still. By the time international negotiations began to seriously address the problem, many whale populations had already been reduced to remnants of [Continue reading]
It is tempting, when thinking about change, to look for the actor at the center of the story. The donor whose gift made something possible. The organization whose strategy unlocked progress. The individual whose decision altered a course of events. These figures are easy to name and easier still to photograph. They offer a sense [Continue reading]
For most of modern history, the open ocean has been treated as a place apart. Beyond the 200-nautical-mile limits of national jurisdiction, it was governed by custom, fragmented rules, and the assumption that what lay far offshore was too vast to manage and too resilient to exhaust. That assumption has worn thin. Fishing fleets now [Continue reading]
Conservation has never lacked alarming facts. What it increasingly lacks is attention. After years of grim headlines, many people do not just feel sad. They disengage. They stop reading, stop donating, and in some cases stop believing that anything meaningful can still be done. That reality is no longer a side issue for the movement. [Continue reading]
In 2050, the world will not feel new. It will feel like the result of habits long set. The children born today will be adults then, shaped more by decisions made before they could vote, work, or speak with authority than by the promises offered once they could speak for themselves. The future will not [Continue reading]
Indonesia’s government has emphasized that the recent catastrophe in Sumatra was triggered by an extraordinary meteorological event. Cyclone Senyar formed in the Malacca Strait — where such storms are “extremely rare” — before unloading record rainfall on Aceh, North Sumatra and West Sumatra. Scientists are cautious about attributing any single storm to climate change. Yet [Continue reading]