Rhett Ayers ButlerShort write-ups on stories by Mongabay journalists.
In Nagaland, edible spiders are not a novelty. They are part of a local food tradition. A new study in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems documents the consumption of two orb-weaver spiders, Nephila pilipes and Trichonephila clavata, both known in the Lotha Naga language as siyankyü. The study, based on interviews with 33 people with [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]
In conservation, absence is often the first sign of trouble. A bird not seen for years may still persist in some overlooked corner of its range. Or it may already be gone. The “lost birds” list was created for this gap, marking species that have slipped from view but not yet into extinction. The latest [Continue reading]
Near Brazil’s Belo Monte dam, one of the world’s largest hydropower projects, the promise of abundant electricity has proved uneven. A household survey of 500 families in Altamira found that 86.8% experienced higher electricity costs after the plant began operating in 2016. Many riverside residents still endure outages, pay steep tariffs, or rely on diesel [Continue reading]
The Turtle Survival Center sits far from the places where most turtles are lost. That distance is part of its purpose. The facility, run by the Turtle Survival Alliance, exists to buy time for species that no longer have much of it. Founded in 2013 in South Carolina, the center functions as a high-security refuge [Continue reading]
Tree planting has become a favored response to environmental loss. Governments, companies, and philanthropies announce large targets with reassuring round numbers. Forests, after all, store carbon, shelter wildlife, and support livelihoods. Yet the details matter. Planting the wrong species, or planting trees where forests did not exist, can undermine both biodiversity and climate goals. That [Continue reading]
Anyone who looks at a social media feed with any regularity is likely familiar with the deluge of fabricated images and videos now circulating online. Some are harmless curiosities (other than the resource use). Others are more troubling. Among the most consequential are AI-generated depictions of wildlife, which are beginning to distort how people understand [Continue reading]
For Isabel Esterman, journalism’s influence is often cumulative. It comes from staying with a subject long enough for the evidence to become harder to ignore. “It’s not one story,” she says. “It’s this collective body of reporting, and staying on it has been significant.” That idea runs through her work at Mongabay, where she has [Continue reading]
In parts of Indonesian Borneo, forests endure not because they are fenced or regulated, but because they are feared. Among the Iban people of Sungai Utik, large strangler fig trees are believed to house spirits that can mislead, sicken, or kill those who disturb them. The belief is not abstract. It is anchored in stories, [Continue reading]
For most of Peru’s scientific history, Indigenous knowledge has existed outside the formal record. It shaped how forests were used, how species were managed, and how risk was understood, but rarely appeared in journals or policy. The boundary is shifting. One of the researchers bringing community knowledge into the scientific literature is Richar Antonio Demetrio, [Continue reading]
Every year brings its small revisions to what humans think they know about animals. 2025 was no exception. Here are some examples compiled by Shreya Dasgupta. Waterfall climbing catfish In Brazil, thousands of bumblebee catfish were seen climbing waterfalls. The fish gathered at the base of cascades on the Aquidauana River, then edged their way [Continue reading]
Every year, science adds names to the living world. The tally is never small. Hundreds of species are formally described, often after years of slow, meticulous work, and often long after the organisms themselves were first seen. Biologists estimate that perhaps only a tenth to a fifth of Earth’s species have been documented. Even among [Continue reading]
Extinction is rarely a moment. It is a process that unfolds offstage, marked by missed sightings, thinning records, and the slow reassignment of hope to footnotes. This year, a small group of species crossed a final bureaucratic threshold. Following new assessments, they were formally listed as extinct on the IUCN Red List. For science, the [Continue reading]
When Truphena Muthoni stepped up to a royal palm in Nyeri and wrapped her arms around its trunk, few expected her to stay there for three days. Even fewer thought the gesture would spark a national conversation. She is 22, softly spoken, and practiced in environmental advocacy. Yet her 72-hour embrace, now awaiting verification by [Continue reading]
In the northern Peruvian Amazon, where the rivers run gold with silt and mercury, the Wampís Nation has grown tired of waiting for the state. Faced with illegal miners, loggers, and drug traffickers, the community has formed its own territorial guard, Charip, to patrol a stretch of rainforest roughly the size of Connecticut, reports Aimee [Continue reading]
What happened to Ghanaian fisheries observer Samuel Abayateye? He was sent to sea to watch others. To count the fish, record their fate, and make sure no one took more than they should. The job was meant to be routine: clipboard, samples, and a small bunk on a ship. Instead, it was perilous. Two years [Continue reading]
When journalist Alan Weisman set out to write Hope Dies Last, he did so from a place of despair. Decades of reporting on ecological collapse, species loss, and the unraveling of Earth’s systems had left him wondering whether the planet could recover from the harm wrought by its dominant species. But as he traveled across [Continue reading]
They are not yet gone. But for thousands of species, the earth is already holding its breath. A new review in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment confirms what conservationists have long suspected: over 10,000 species now sit on the precipice, listed as Critically Endangered by the IUCN, the final designation before vanishing from the wild [Continue reading]
It was not the first time the Vietnamese authorities accused someone of tax evasion. But few such cases have ended in a five-year prison sentence. Fewer still have involved a man whose life was defined by public service: An environmental lawyer who trained young attorneys, comforted poisoned communities, and helped rewrite the nation’s environmental laws. [Continue reading]
Young environmentalists give up their futures in service of the collective good. In a nation where speaking up can lead to prison, a group of young Cambodians has refused to be silent. One year ago, five members of Mother Nature Cambodia were jailed on charges of plotting against the government. Their real offense, it seems, [Continue reading]
In the embattled heart of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where war and wilderness meet, an unheralded act of defiance unfolded late last year. In October 2024, conservationists released four female Grauer’s gorillas—Isangi, Lulingu, Mapendo, and Ndjingala—into the wild, marking the largest reintroduction of eastern gorillas in African history, reports Elodie Toto. The release took [Continue reading]
In the summer of 2024, searing ocean temperatures devastated much of Mesoamerica’s coral. But in Honduras’s Tela Bay, a reef known as Cocalito remains improbably intact—dominated by elkhorn corals so robust they scrape the water’s surface. The survival of this reef is baffling. Elkhorn coral (Acropora palmata), once common across the Caribbean, has declined by [Continue reading]
In a packed event held in Palo Alto at the end of SF Climate Week, Willie Shubert shared a compelling example of how Mongabay’s journalism is making a real-world impact. He described how Mongabay’s consistent, beat-focused coverage helped prevent the deforestation of 535,000 hectares of Amazon rainforest in Suriname—an area equivalent to more than 15% [Continue reading]
Much has already been written about the environmental legacy of Pope Francis. However, Justin Catanoso, who has long reported on the pontiff’s activism, does a commendable job capturing the Pope’s greenery in a recent write-up for Mongabay. Reflecting on the pontiff’s passing on April 21st at age 88, Catanoso notes that the world lost not [Continue reading]
At a time when traditional news outlets are shedding reporters and chasing clicks, Mongabay is bucking the trend: it’s growing. One key, says David Martin, our director of philanthropy, is that Mongabay isn’t selling ads or stoking outrage—it’s cultivating trust. “Our currency,” he told Mike DiGirolamo in a recent conversation, “is really impact.” Martin, who [Continue reading]