Rhett Ayers Butler
I started working on a piece about Dan Janzen in 2022. I had long known his work, both the scientific and conservation sides. But as I became more aware of how the scope of that work expanded over the course of his career, I came to understand more fully his legacy, as well as the [Continue reading]
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]
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]
Conservation often sounds most persuasive when it is described as a plan. There are maps, budgets, governance models, community consultations, monitoring frameworks and theories of change. All are necessary. None is sufficient on their own. Luis Arranz, who has spent more than four decades working in Central African conservation, makes a simpler point: the hard [Continue reading]
As his 100th birthday approaches, David Attenborough occupies an unusual place in public life: not a practicing scientist, not quite a conventional journalist, and no longer only a broadcaster. His voice has become one of the most recognizable ways the public encounters the living world. That was not always his role. When Attenborough began at [Continue reading]
The gunfire began just before six in the morning. At first, Christine (Tina) 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 [Continue reading]
Last Thursday I gave the keynote address at the Pacific Forest Trust’s Forest Fete gala. I spoke about four lessons I’ve learned over 27 years at Mongabay on how to reach and engage audiences: Identifying your audience (who you’re actually trying to reach) Framing (how the issue is presented) Narrative (what makes people stay and [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]
Tropical forests can return quickly in appearance. A pasture left to regenerate may, within a few decades, look like forest again. What is less visible is how long full ecological recovery takes. Beneath the canopy, different species return at different rates, shaping a system that may resemble forest without yet functioning like one. A study [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]
For decades, conservation has relied on a straightforward premise: counting nature. Scientists track species, map forests, and monitor ecosystems to inform policies ranging from protected areas to global biodiversity targets. That foundation remains intact, but the systems behind it are undergoing rapid change. A recent perspective led by William Sutherland argues that biodiversity measurement is [Continue reading]
To those who map the world for conservation, the forests of northeastern Gabon can appear almost empty. Satellite images show an unbroken canopy, and global datasets classify large areas as “intact forest landscapes,” supposedly free of human influence. On paper, such places look pristine. In Massaha, a village in Ogooué-Ivindo province, that picture does not [Continue reading]
Earlier this month, Jeremy Hance’s “‘An epidemic of suffering’: Why are conservationists breaking down?” and the follow-up commentary “Emotional and psychological stresses beleaguer conservation professionals” by Vik Mohan and Nerissa Chao gave fresh urgency—and language—to a crisis many in conservation have been naming quietly for years. This piece builds on their reporting and reflections, and [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]
Coral reefs are among the most productive ecosystems on Earth, built slowly by animals that resemble plants. Each coral polyp hosts microscopic algae that convert sunlight into energy. When ocean temperatures rise, this partnership breaks down. The coral expels the algae, loses its color, and turns white — a process known as bleaching. The coral [Continue reading]
Rainfall is often treated as a gift of geography — a function of latitude, oceans, and atmospheric circulation. Research increasingly suggests that in the tropics it is also a product of ecosystems. Forests do not merely receive rain; they help generate it, regulate its distribution, and sustain the conditions that allow it to persist. A [Continue reading]
Lisa Miller did not come to biodiversity finance through markets or models. She came through animals. Growing up in Australia, her interest in wildlife was personal and specific, long before conservation became a policy debate or an investment theme. That early pull led her to study zoology and later to work at the Australian Museum, [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]
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]
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]
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]
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. Discovery, too, is rarely a moment. It is a process of comparison, argument, and waiting—years spent persuading other experts that what you are seeing is, in fact, new. A [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]
Efforts to protect Amazonia also face a communications challenge. Four years after Indigenous organizations helped carry a landmark motion through the world’s largest conservation congress—an appeal to protect 80% of Amazonia by 2025—the region has endured its worst drought in more than a century and fires on a continental scale. The coalition behind that target [Continue reading]