Rhett Ayers Butler
Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research, or INPE, detected 370 square kilometers of deforestation in May through its DETER alert system. That is down from 960 square kilometers in May 2025, a decline of about 61%. May is an important month in the Amazon deforestation calendar. It often marks the transition toward the drier season, [Continue reading]
The rate of tropical primary forest loss fell sharply in 2025 after reaching a record high in 2024, but it’s too early for forest advocates to celebrate. According to new satellite data from the University of Maryland’s GLAD lab, presented by Global Forest Watch, tropical primary forest loss fell 36% from 2024’s record-breaking level. Nevertheless, [Continue reading]
Since 2009, no Panamanian golden frog has been confirmed in the wild. The small, luminous amphibian, once common along mountain streams in central Panama, vanished within a few years as chytridiomycosis, a fungal disease, swept through the region. The pathogen attacks the skin, an organ amphibians rely on to regulate salts and water. Infected frogs [Continue reading]
Author’s note (March 5, 2026): Questions have been raised about the validity of an image included in the Biotropica paper. The authors state that they analyzed the image’s metadata and ran it through an AI detector, but independent analysis has questioned its origin. On India’s railways, stowaways are not limited to ticketless passengers. Some arrive [Continue reading]
Conservation is often framed as a technical exercise: how much land to protect, which species to prioritize, what policies deliver measurable gains. A recent paper in Nature, A Framework for Addressing Racial and Related Inequities in Conservation, argues that this framing overlooks a deeper constraint. Many of the field’s most persistent problems, the authors contend, [Continue reading]
In the mountains of central Veracruz, scientific work is rarely abstract. It means walking narrow paths through cloud forest, speaking patiently with communities, and learning to read landscapes that yield information slowly. It also means accepting risk as a condition of knowledge. Field research unfolds in places where the state is often distant and authority [Continue reading]
The death of a well-known wild animal is an odd kind of news. It is intimate, because so many people feel they have met the creature through photographs and video. It is also impersonal, because the animal has no public life beyond what humans project onto it. For elephants, that tension is sharpened by history. [Continue reading]
Conservation debates are usually framed by damage already visible. Forests are cleared, fisheries decline, protected areas invaded, and budgets cut. Less attention is paid to developments that have not yet hardened into crises, partly because they are unfamiliar and partly because they fall between established fields. A recent horizon scan led by William J. Sutherland [Continue reading]
In Madagascar’s cities, a quiet but lucrative market is reshaping the future of one of the world’s most imperiled groups of animals. Lemurs—already the most threatened mammals on the planet—are being sold as a kind of urban delicacy, traded through discreet channels that rarely resemble the conventional wildlife markets familiar across Africa or Asia. A [Continue reading]
Reforestation has become a feel-good global rallying cry. From corporations touting “net zero” targets to philanthropies seeking visible impact, planting trees has become shorthand for planetary repair. Yet behind the glossy photos of saplings and smiling farmers lies a question few can answer with confidence: which organizations are actually doing it well? Karen D Holl, [Continue reading]
The Amazon is often treated as a single forest, yet the risks its people face from extreme weather vary sharply across borders. A new analysis by researchers from Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia, Colombia and the United States suggests those risks are also widely undercounted. The team compiled more than 12,500 reports of storms, floods, landslides, droughts [Continue reading]
For decades, scientists have warned that humanity is driving a sixth mass extinction, with species disappearing at rates far above the natural background level. Yet new research published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B suggests a more complicated picture. Examining 912 documented extinctions over the past 500 years, Kristen Saban and John Wiens of [Continue reading]
Today the nave of Washington National Cathedral was filled for Jane Goodall’s celebration of life, drawing scientists, activists, diplomats, and children alike. The service opened not in mourning but in gratitude. “This cathedral is a house of prayer for all people,” said Dean Randy Hollerith. “Jane was one of the world’s most remarkable human beings.” [Continue reading]
There are lives that remind us what it means to care. Some voices teach not through power but through presence, asking us to listen, to notice, to act. Tomorrow, the world will honor Jane Goodall, who did this better than almost anyone. Her passing is a loss to us all. Yet the work she began [Continue reading]
I recently contributed a section on how to communicate about the Amazon for The Endangered Amazonia report, which came out this week in Spanish, Portuguese, and English. Here’s a brief summary of my contribution. From doom to agency: Talking about saving Amazonia Many stories about the Amazon read like elegies. Drought, smoke, lawlessness—each headline darker [Continue reading]
When Jane Goodall died, the world didn’t just lose a scientist; it lost a moral compass. She had an uncanny ability to make people believe that what they did—however small—mattered. That conviction wasn’t sentimental; it was tactical. She understood that movements endure not on outrage alone but on the steady fuel of purpose. I first [Continue reading]
As the world’s attention turns toward COP30 in Belém next month, the story of Brazil’s Amazon is shifting—though not quite in a straightforward way. According to the government’s satellite monitoring system, INPE’s PRODES, deforestation in the “Legal Amazon” totaled 5,796 square kilometers in the 12 months ending July 31, 2025—an 11% drop from the previous [Continue reading]
Why did I choose a bisected nautilus for the Mongabay version of Why philanthropists should invest in independent journalism while I used a river delta for the blog version? The answer is I struggled to find a photo I’d taken that could represent this piece, so I decided to go metaphorical. Here’s my reasoning: Like [Continue reading]
Jane Goodall often said that hope was not the denial of difficulty, but the discipline of looking for what can still be saved. She refused to confuse optimism with naïveté. In her view, hope was a working tool way of holding on to agency amid the vastness of the world’s problems. A single chimp released [Continue reading]
The world’s forests tell two stories at once. Even as chainsaws advance, new trees are rising in their wake. More than 11 million hectares of tropical moist forest—an area roughly the size of Cuba—were in some stage of natural regrowth between 2015 and 2021, according to the Forest Declaration Assessment 2025. Latin America shows the [Continue reading]
With the World Conservation Congress meeting this week, I thought it was useful to revisit a study published earlier this year on conservation funding. For decades, conservationists have warned that the planet’s attention—and its purse—are skewed toward the charismatic few. A sweeping analysis of some 14,600 conservation projects over 25 years confirms that bias in [Continue reading]
A few weeks ago, I wrote about navigating conservation’s crisis. During Climate Week in New York, I joined discussions with grassroots leaders from the Global South that offered a sharper view of how philanthropy meets—and sometimes misses—the realities of frontline work. Their reflections highlighted dynamics that merit further exploration. Philanthropy is purportedly rooted in a [Continue reading]
The global renaissance of psychedelics is restoring once-taboo substances to scientific and cultural respectability. Yet as the world rediscovers their promise, it risks extinguishing the very species that make them possible. A new review by Anna Ermakova and Sam Gandy highlights an uncomfortable paradox: the search for psychological transformation is driving ecological decline. From the [Continue reading]
Long before humans built computers, nature built a better one. Razan Al Mubarak sees biodiversity as the planet’s original information network. In a commentary published on Mongabay, Al Mubarak, president of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, offers a framing that has stayed with me. She argues that biodiversity is not simply a collection [Continue reading]
I was quite surprised when Lúcia Lohmann, director of the Missouri Botanical Garden, reached out to inform me that the venerable institution would award me the Henry Shaw Medal. I’m deeply grateful for the recognition. The Garden has long stood as one of the world’s great centers of science and conservation. To be recognized by [Continue reading]