Rhett Ayers Butler
Moving away from doomer content The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard published a profile of Mongabay’s video program and Lucia Torres, our video managing editor. Torres is currently a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. Torres discussed how Mongabay’s video strategy has evolved, including putting more emphasis on the journalists behind our reporting and [Continue reading]
We can’t expect the AI traffic boom to last. So Mongabay has launched a new mobile app. Last month I wrote about how AI is affecting Mongabay traffic, contributing to surging readership of our news reporting, but also collapsing the reach of easily summarized evergreen content. In short, AI is transforming how people discover information. [Continue reading]
In a recent post I noted that Mongabay’s evergreen content has been getting crushed in the AI chatbot era, but that our news traffic is surging. A large part of this trend is referral traffic from Google Discover, the AI-powered recommendation engine that suggests stories on Android devices and other Google surfaces. Through the first [Continue reading]
Last year I wrote a piece about how generative AI seemed to be affecting traffic to Mongabay’s news sites. I think it would be useful to provide an update, especially in light of recently unsealed court documents showing that employees at Microsoft and OpenAI had raised concerns that LLMs could eviscerate publishers by reducing traffic [Continue reading]
I recently spoke with Maurice Oniango for the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford about Mongabay’s evolution from a personal rainforest website into a global environmental newsroom. One theme we discussed was how journalism models shape coverage itself. Advertising-driven media often pushes outlets toward scale, speed, and broad audience [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]
The following is some of what I shared during a recent conversation with Matt Pycroft on The Adventure Podcast’s ‘The Far Reaches’ series. For a long time Mongabay existed in a way that was almost embarrassing to describe. People would write to ask about the organization and imagine an office somewhere with editors, departments and [Continue reading]
I am often asked what Mongabay’s legacy is, or what it might turn out to be. The question usually comes with an assumption that a quarter-century of publishing should yield a tidy answer. It does not. Mongabay did not begin with a theory of media change, nor with an ambition to redefine environmental journalism. It [Continue reading]
In 2025, Mongabay reached 111 million unique visitors through our websites, a 46% increase over the previous year. That figure captures direct readership only. It excludes circulation through social media, messaging apps, and republication by more than 100 partner outlets, all of which extend the audience well beyond what web analytics record. Even so, the [Continue reading]
The arrival of generative artificial intelligence has unsettled journalism in familiar ways. Traffic models look fragile. Copyright is contested. The marginal cost of producing words has collapsed. It is tempting to conclude that news is becoming less valuable just as machines become more fluent. So far for Mongabay, the opposite is happening. AI systems are [Continue reading]
For most of my career, I’ve tried to ensure that people have the information they need to make decisions that safeguard nature. Yet the people whose choices often matter most for forests, fisheries, and wildlife are usually the least served by conventional media. Farmers, fishers, Indigenous land stewards, and community leaders often operate in what [Continue reading]
The struggle to protect nature is also a struggle to explain it. Forests, reefs, and rivers are disappearing faster than our ability to explain why. In many places, those best positioned to tell these stories lack mentorship, funding, or editorial backing. For emerging journalists—or those pivoting from other beats—the gap between curiosity and capability can [Continue reading]
The catalytic role of independently verified information When a logging concession in Gabon threatened a community’s ancestral forest, their appeals to officials went nowhere—until the story was reported. Once the facts reached the public record, the environment minister revoked the company’s permit and moved to legally protect the forest, officially recognizing a community’s stewardship. The [Continue reading]
Before dawn breaks over Surabaya, Indonesia’s “City of Heroes,” Akhyari Hananto is already at work. After morning prayers, he opens Google Analytics to watch the night’s reading patterns unfold—what stories drew attention, which headlines resonated, and where curiosity faded. “That information often determines how I’ll prioritize my work for the rest of the day,” he [Continue reading]
Like many mission-driven newsrooms, Mongabay is deeply concerned with whether our journalism makes a difference. We measure success not by the size of our audience but by what our stories enable—better governance, empowered communities, more resilient ecosystems, and the spread of innovations. Tracking those ripples has been a priority since Mongabay’s founding, and today it [Continue reading]
The forest in northern Gabon didn’t look like a battleground. It was a patchwork of hunting trails and village paths, home to fruit trees and ancestral graves. When a logging concession encroached and the community of Massaha protested, their pleas traveled poorly through official channels. Then the story was reported, documented and read by people [Continue reading]
I often return to this series of images, which I took in Jambi, Indonesia, in 2022. At first glance, it seems to capture something hopeful: a full-circle rainbow arcing over a lush green landscape. But look closer, and you’ll see what lies beneath the beauty—a vast palm oil plantation, carved out of what was once [Continue reading]
In the often fractious landscape of environmental discourse, S. Gopikrishna Warrier is a steadying presence. As the editorial director of Mongabay-India, Warrier has spent the past seven years cultivating a newsroom that brings light, not heat, to India’s environmental challenges. His calm authority, born of nearly four decades in journalism and communications, has helped steer Mongabay’s [Continue reading]