Rhett Ayers Butler
Last week, Arader Galleries generously hosted Mongabay’s Climate Week event, which focused on Suriname. Arader Galleries is featuring the work of naturalist and botanical artist Maria Sibylla Merian, a German-born naturalist who, in 1699, left the comforts of Europe for Suriname alongside her daughter Dorothea. Merian sold her possessions to finance the journey, decades before [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]
A small, blue-gray fish that once gathered in loose schools along the rocky shores of the Galápagos Islands has become the subject of a more precise question: whether it is already gone. The Galápagos damselfish (Azurina eupalama) has not been recorded since 1983. Before that, it was regularly encountered. Specimens were collected by nearly every [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]
More than eight hundred years ago, Maimonides wrote that the highest form of giving is to make charity itself unnecessary. That wisdom feels newly relevant today, as questions about power and purpose continue to shape modern philanthropy. Last week Laurene Powell Jobs revisited the idea, warning that too often wealth becomes a substitute for participation. [Continue reading]
At the close of San Francisco Climate Week 2025, María Isabel Torres, Program Director of Mongabay Latam, shared how local journalism is driving environmental change across Latin America. Speaking as a Peruvian journalist based in Lima, María Isabel detailed investigations that have exposed hidden threats to both biodiversity and Indigenous communities. One investigation revealed 67 [Continue reading]