Rhett Butler

1 week ago | news.mongabay.com | Rhett Butler

Record-breaking forest loss in 2024: Tropical primary rainforest loss surged to 6.7 million hectares—nearly double the previous year—driven primarily by fire for the first time on record. Latin America bore the brunt: Brazil accounted for 42% of global tropical forest loss, while Bolivia saw a staggering 200% increase; Colombia experienced rising deforestation linked to land grabs and coca cultivation.

2 weeks ago | news.mongabay.com | Rhett Butler

In the Yolŋu worldview, land and people are not separate things. They are interwoven—spirit, soil, and songline one and the same. Few embodied that unity more steadily than M Marika, a senior elder of the Rirratjiŋu clan, who died this month in north-east Arnhem Land. He was 64. For more than three decades, Marika stood as a pillar of his community—not by force of volume or title, but through a resolute commitment to his people, their future, and the land that held them.

1 month ago | news.mongabay.com | Rhett Butler

A sudden freeze on U.S. conservation funding is sending shockwaves through efforts to combat the illegal wildlife trade, a multibillion-dollar industry pushing iconic species toward extinction, through Africa and Southeast Asia, a recent Mongabay article reports. In Malawi, where authorities recently took down a major Chinese-led trafficking ring with U.S.-backed intelligence and training, momentum is faltering.

2 months ago | news.mongabay.com | Rhett Butler

The queuña forests in Peru, once covering vast stretches of the mountains, have dwindled to a mere fraction of their former glory, leaving behind a landscape where biodiversity and water security hang in the balance. This ecological collapse has triggered an unforeseen consequence: wild animals, displaced by deforestation, are edging closer to Indigenous communities, sparking conflict between people and predators reports Mongabay contributor James Hall.

2 months ago | news.mongabay.com | Rhett Butler

Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. In a quiet corner of northern New York state, the white pines of the Adirondack Forest Preserve rise like sentinels, untouched for more than 125 years. Their silence speaks volumes. These towering trees, some 150 feet (about 46 meters) tall and more than a century old, stand as evidence of a counterintuitive climate solution: do nothing. Well, not quite nothing.