Mongabay

🖼️ HOW STORIES SHAPE THE PLANET: What I've learned about communicating science from 25 years of Mongabay 📼 The Centre is excited to welcome Rhett Ayers Butler, Founder & CEO of Mongabay, for a talk and fireside chat in NUS! Date: 18 November 2025, Tuesday Time: 10.30AM – 12PM Venue: University Hall Auditorium (Level 2), National University of Singapore To register and for more information: https://lnkd.in/gQgYUVaH Rhett will give a wide-ranging talk on how nature reporting can bridge science, society, and hope. Drawing on 25 years of experience leading one of the world’s largest environmental newsrooms, he will share lessons from Mongabay’s evolution—from a one-person website into a global, multilingual network reporting from more than 80 countries 🕰️ The talk will explore how clear, compelling communication can translate complex science into stories that inform action and policy; how journalism can contribute to measurable real-world impact; and what scientists can learn from journalistic storytelling to reach broader audiences. Rhett will also discuss the changing media landscape, including the challenges of polarization, misinformation, and news avoidance, and how approaches like solutions journalism can restore trust and agency. Blending personal reflection with practical insights, he will offer a hopeful perspective on how storytelling, when done with empathy and evidence, can reconnect people with the natural world and one another ⛰️ After his sharing, Rhett will also sit down for an interactive and cozy forest-side chat with the audience. He will be joined by Sankar Ananthanarayanan, a PhD Candidate at the Theoretical Ecology Lab (NUS DBS) and a Co-founder of the Herpetological Society of Singapore, who will facilitate the conversation and Q&A with the audience. All are welcome! 🤩

At the Rainforest Alliance, optimism is at the heart of everything we do. Join us 𝗪𝗲𝗱𝗻𝗲𝘀𝗱𝗮𝘆, 𝗢𝗰𝘁𝗼𝗯𝗲𝗿 𝟮𝟵, 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝟭𝟭:𝟬𝟬 𝗔𝗠 - 𝟭𝟮:𝟬𝟬 𝗣𝗠 𝗘𝗦𝗧 for a powerful Beneath the Canopy webinar featuring: 🌿 Daniel Katz, Co-Founder & Board Chair, Rainforest Alliance 🌿 Rhett Ayers Butler, Founder & CEO, Mongabay Together, they’ll explore how optimism—when paired with impact—isn’t just a feeling, it’s a working method. 💪 Also joining the conversation are our inspirational colleagues, Michael Gibbons, Director of Creative & Communications, and Ndeye Ndebane SARR, Communications Manager for West & Central Africa. They'll share more on the Rainforest Alliance's commitment to positive storytelling and on-the-ground success stories from our Integrated Landscape Management programs in Cameroon and DRC. 📍 𝗟𝗼𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: Zoom—𝗥𝗦𝗩𝗣 𝗛𝗘𝗥𝗘: https://lnkd.in/g_2hQhtx Whether you're a conservationist, communicator, donor, or simply seeking climate hope—this one’s for you. We hope to see you there! #RainforestAlliance #Optimism #ClimateOptimism #Storytelling #LandscapeManagement #Webinar

🌿 Mongabay founder and CEO Rhett Ayers Butler has been awarded the 2025 Henry Shaw Medal by the Missouri Botanical Garden (St. Louis, U.S.) — one of the oldest and most prestigious honors in conservation and botanical science, established in 1893. The medal celebrates individuals whose work advances conservation, science, and public understanding of nature. While most recipients have been scientists, Rhett joins a distinguished group from beyond academia, including the National Geographic Society and the U.K.’s Prince Charles (now King Charles III). “It is a tremendous honor to receive the Henry Shaw Medal from such an esteemed institution,” Rhett said. “The Garden’s legacy of advancing science, conservation, and public understanding is an inspiration, and I am deeply grateful to be recognized alongside those who have contributed so much to protecting our planet.” Rhett founded Mongabay in 1999 after a life-changing encounter with a wild orangutan in Borneo — a moment that sparked a lifelong mission to tell the world’s untold environmental stories. Today, Mongabay has grown into a global newsroom with ~1,000 contributors in 80 countries, producing journalism in seven languages that informs decisions, holds power accountable, and empowers local communities to defend their ecosystems. 🗓️ He will receive the medal at a ceremony in St. Louis on Oct. 22. 🙏 A heartfelt thanks to the Missouri Botanical Garden for this recognition — and to all who make Mongabay’s work possible. Join us in celebrating independent journalism that protects nature and people. 💚 Help us keep doing what we do best. Donate: https://lnkd.in/gEyyuskg. 🌎 Read more on this by Bobby Bascomb: https://lnkd.in/gkK9U9An.

In a post-literate age, written journalism matters more than ever 📖 This month James Marriott warned (https://mongabay.cc/benXyr) that we are entering a “post-literate society.” He traced how the eighteenth-century “reading revolution” seeded democracy, science, and civil society, and argued that smartphones and short-form video are eroding the habits of deep reading that underpinned those gains. The Enlightenment required readers, not scrollers. For journalists, this is a sobering thesis. The written word is still uniquely suited to what Neil Postman called “following a line of thought”—classifying, reasoning, and interrogating ideas. Sentences weigh evidence, expose contradictions, and test logic. That scaffolding enables accountability and deliberation. Without it, decision-making tilts toward the emotive, the fragmentary, the theatrical. At Mongabay we see this distinction daily. When we investigate deforestation in Indonesia or expose fraudulent carbon schemes in Peru, it is the written investigation that informs policy, spurs enforcement, and empowers communities. Lawmakers, prosecutors, and Indigenous leaders cite the article itself—the words, the data, the documentation. Rarely is it the video alone that prompts action. Yet video is not irrelevant. It can capture attention, spark emotion, and reach audiences who may never read a long feature. Our short documentaries and explainers on Indigenous forest defenders or destructive fishing practices have extended reach and drawn new audiences into conversation with our reporting. But video and print are not equivalents. A video may persuade through images and sound; a written story persuades through evidence and reasoning. Text creates the record that can be cited in a lawsuit; video provides the imagery that lingers in memory. Each has a place in the information ecosystem, but they are not interchangeable. Written reporting remains indispensable for accountability because it creates the durable record policymakers, courts, and communities can cite. Video can at times act as a force multiplier, broadening reach and helping keep stories alive in the public imagination. Words build the case; images carry it farther. At Mongabay we measure success not by clicks but by what our stories enable: better governance, empowered communities, the spread of innovations, and more resilient ecosystems. In a world of proliferating screens, the discipline of the written word is more important than ever—paired with the creativity to bring those words into the feeds where people now spend their time. The full piece: https://mongabay.cc/n6GCMU

How reporting gets results The forest in northern Gabon didn’t look like a battleground. It held trails, fruit trees, and ancestral graves. When a logging concession encroached and the community of Massaha protested, little happened. Then the story was reported, documented, and read by people in a position to act. The environment minister revoked the permit and the government moved to protect the forest. The win wasn’t journalism’s alone; it moved faster because facts were public. This is how journalism drives impact: It supplies the oxygen action needs—credible information, in time, in public. Impact starts with agenda setting. In Sabah, Malaysia, coverage of a secret 100-year carbon-credit deal exposed terms, intermediaries, and missing consent. Once on the record, scrutiny stalled and then unraveled the plan. Incentives shift too. Markets and ministries respond when reputations are at risk and subsidies grow costly. Reporting on wood-pellet climate claims gave lawmakers specifics; hearings tightened and a firm lost access to public money. Protection matters. In Peru, stories about Indigenous communities facing land grabs and narcotrafficking assembled evidence that prosecutors could use. Supply chains show the pattern. Years of reporting on deforestation tied to cattle and leather in Paraguay helped put leather into the EU’s anti-deforestation rule. Journalists didn’t write the law; they made its absence impossible to defend. Solutions reporting helps by pairing problems with credible responses and testing whether they work. Coverage of agroforestry’s economics put numbers to yields, risk, and carbon; a major technology firm added it to its climate portfolio. Distribution matters. The audiences who turn information into action—policymakers, funders, prosecutors, compliance teams, local leaders—come through quieter channels. Searchable databases & publishing in Indonesian, Spanish or Hindi reach where decisions are made. Guardrails matter. Journalism can become extractive. The antidote is collaboration with local reporters, sharing data with communities, and protecting sources. Measure outcomes too: Beyond clicks, track when a tender is canceled, a supplier is changed, or a land title is won. Humility is essential. Journalism is a catalyst, not a cure. Return to Massaha: the protected forest is neither pristine nor permanent. But a path opened because a community insisted on being heard and a newsroom insisted on being precise. Multiply that dynamic and you get a more subtle kind of impact: Course corrections that add up to a change in direction. In an era awash in synthetic content, that older craft — finding out what’s true & telling people in time for it to matter — remains civic infrastructure. Journalism at its best doesn’t demand credit. It demands results. And it earns them by doing the mundane things that make democracies and markets less blind: Showing up, listening, checking, publishing, and then following up.

She built a newsroom across 7 countries—Here’s how she did it 🛠️ As Mongabay expands its impact globally, few leaders embody its mission more fully than María Isabel Torres, the Program Director of Mongabay Latam. Based in Lima, Torres has spent the past nine years not only managing Mongabay’s Latin American bureau but also shaping its identity. Under her leadership, Mongabay Latam has grown into a regional powerhouse for environmental journalism, known for its investigative rigor, collaborative ethos, and commitment to spotlighting urgent environmental issues. This interview is part of Conversations with Mongabay Leaders (https://mongabay.cc/yZVPX5), a series exploring the people driving change within our organization. Torres’s story is one of vision, resilience, and deep belief in journalism as a force for accountability. Torres didn’t begin in environmental journalism. Her early career was rooted in political reporting during one of Peru’s most turbulent eras. Inspired by journalism that exposed corruption under the Fujimori regime, she developed a lasting respect for its public value. Later roles in the NGO sector and Peru’s Ministry of Environment revealed the complex links between environmental and political issues, setting the stage for her return to journalism with a new focus. When the chance came to lead Mongabay’s Latin America initiative, Torres saw it as more than a job — it was an opportunity to build something lasting. Her training in anthropology, deep regional understanding, and journalistic instincts helped her create a newsroom that transcends borders. She envisioned Mongabay Latam as a collaborative platform able to report with depth, context, and nuance. Torres stands out as a leader who nurtures both talent and purpose. She has built a multicultural, multidisciplinary team spanning seven countries and working with over 90 partner media outlets. She looks for alignment with Mongabay’s values, not just technical skill. Her leadership style emphasizes empathy, clarity, and mutual respect — all essential for building a resilient newsroom. At the heart of her work are people: Those defending land and biodiversity, and those who trust journalists to tell their stories with dignity. She is especially committed to amplifying the voices of women — journalists, scientists, and Indigenous leaders — whose contributions are too often overlooked. As Mongabay Latam nears its 10th anniversary, Torres is focused on the future: How to grow, how to innovate, and how to foster a culture of integrity and safety in a region where journalism can be both vital and dangerous. Through it all, she remains guided by curiosity and the belief that journalism, when done with care and collaboration, can truly make a difference. In this conversation, Torres reflects on her path, the lessons she’s learned, and what it takes to lead a newsroom committed to impact. The interview: https://mongabay.cc/I0j3ci

Why we pair crisis reporting with stories of hope 🌈 I often return to this series of images, which I took in 2022 in Jambi, Indonesia. 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 native rainforest. For me, the photos encapsulate one of the central paradoxes we face in environmental journalism: the coexistence of wonder and loss, resilience and destruction, all in the same frame. The deeper we go into environmental journalism, the more paradoxes we encounter. At Mongabay, we sit with a particularly difficult one: The more intimately we understand the scale of ecological loss, the harder it becomes to stay hopeful—yet the people living closest to the crisis are often the ones imagining the boldest futures. Our work demands precision. It requires us to report on vanishing rainforests, vanishing species, vanishing time. To bear witness to lives uprooted by mining, by heat, by flood. To document not just data, but grief. There is no room to look away. And yet, only telling what’s broken isn’t enough. A steady drumbeat of devastation can numb readers, or worse, convince them that nothing can be done. That’s where the other side of the paradox comes in: when we highlight real-world responses—stories of reforestation, Indigenous leadership, coral restoration, and agroecology—we don’t dilute the truth. We expand it. We show that amid the unraveling, people are still choosing to protect what they love. This is the premise of our solutions journalism: that spotlighting success doesn’t deny the crisis: It helps prevent burnout, fuels action, and fosters resilience. It’s not about cheerleading or false optimism. It’s about documenting the full picture of what’s happening, including what’s working, so that others might learn, replicate, or support it. The people we interview often embody this paradox. A park manager in Indonesia rewilding a degraded forest without recognition. A fisher in Madagascar rebuilding local governance structures without external financial incentives. A scientist in Colombia restoring trust between communities and conservation, without formal support. They carry loss in one hand and possibility in the other. They keep going not because they’re certain of victory, but because not trying would be a deeper betrayal. Their stories—and the solutions they point to—are not afterthoughts. They are strategies for survival. They are how we stitch meaning back into the work, especially when the data alone feels too heavy to hold. Hope, then, is not the opposite of truth. It is what allows us to live with truth without giving up. In amplifying what’s working, we give readers—and ourselves—permission to keep imagining, and building, a future still worth fighting for.