Mongabay seeking Conservation Solutions for new Special Reporting Project
Much of the narrative around conservation dwells on doom and gloom – habitats being destroyed, species being pushed closer to extinction, and destructive projects – despite the presence of noteworthy successes and promising practices. A new Mongabay reporting project aims to identify solutions to environmental challenges, so that they can be celebrated and adopted more widely. We’re searching for real-world examples from both land and sea, which can help conservation groups, agencies, and communities address the problems caused by habitat loss, overharvesting, climate change, pollution, and other threats. Through this reporting effort, we aim to help groups who may lack access to information on available tools and strategies, by highlighting where and why conservation efforts have been successful. Highlighting success stories can lead to transformative change by providing practitioners with blueprints and case studies for effective models. For a detailed description of the project and instructions on how to submit your pitch, please click...
New Investigative Special Reporting Project: Cross-Border Commodities
Examining the origins of commodities and products is a rich field for investigative inquiry, with probes of supply chains revealing major cases of environmental criminality, human rights abuses and corruption, prompting action by policymakers. Yet accurately conveying the importance of local environmental trends often requires a collaborative approach to gain a deeper understanding of global and transboundary forces, as well as how these processes intersect with a vast number of communities and ecosystems in ways that defy conventional news narratives. In response, Mongabay is seeking pitches for cross-border investigative reporting projects that go beyond the daily news headlines to uncover wrongdoing at the intersection of global trade and environmental degradation. For a detailed description of the project and instructions on how to submit your pitch, please...
Mongabay founder interviewed about his history with Madagascar
Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler was recently interviewed by Rainbow Travel for its blog. In the interview, conducted by Rainbow Tours’ Madagascar & Alternative Africa product manager and author/conservation writer Derek Schuurman, Rhett talked about his inspiration for starting Mongabay, including the role his visits to Madagascar played in the site’s origin as well as WildMadagascar.org, Mongabay’s sister site. The strange and unique flora and fauna of Madagascar made it an obsession from the moment I learned about the island. My first visit to Madagascar as a teen was pretty disastrous, but nonetheless I saw so many interesting things that I had to return a few years later. Travel to Madagascar invariably includes highs and lows from amazing wildlife to destroyed landscapes, but I recommend it as a destination for anyone passionate about wildlife who has the ability to weather a bit of adventure. He also revealed that Mongabay is hiring its first journalist dedicated to covering conservation and issues related to it in Madagascar. Malavika Vyawahare — an award-winning environmental journalist who has reported for Hindustan Times, The New York Times, The Guardian, Al Jazeera and Scientific American — joined the team in April 2019. Check out the interview at An Interview with Mongabay CEO Rhett...
Mongabay in the news, April 2019
Some top impressions for Mongabay in the media last month were in the journal Science which reported on our feature about glow in the dark frogs. and Foreign Policy whose article about the presidential election in Indonesia referenced our 2-year investigation of corrupt land deals that underpin the expansion of palm oil in the country. Elsewhere, Public Radio International picked up on Brazil correspondent Sue Branford’s reporting about the new Brazilian President’s plan to open indigenous reserves to mining without their consent in a conversation that aired on many US radio stations including WBFO in Buffalo, NY, and WESA in Pittsburgh, PA. Our reporting also appears beyond the bounds of our main website and its multiple language subdomains when other outlets republish our articles, such as the report about indigenous people responding to deforestation threats in Panama that later appeared at the Pulitzer Center’s website. Mongabay reports are regularly republished like this under our Creative Commons license, and we encourage other media outlets to use our features in their own publications (review our reuse policy and guidelines here). Here’s a selection of outlets that our reporting was republished, cited, or re-reported by during April 2019: Adaderana-Sri Lanka, Asia Times, Asia Sentinel, Asian Correspondent, Business Times, Ecowatch, Foreign Policy, Frontier Myanmar, Gizmodo, Inhabitat, The Island, National Geographic, Pacific Standard, Public Radio International, Pulitzer Center, Science, Smithsonian, WBFO-Buffalo, and WESA-Pittsburgh. Banner image: The critically endangered golden mantella is one of Madagascar’s most threatened amphibian species. Image by Rhett A....
Mongabay seeks writers to investigate deforestation alerts
Mongabay regularly uses satellite imagery and information provided by reports from Global Forest Watch (GFW) to assess and investigate deforestation trends in forested areas ranging from the purely local to the global scale. However, GFW has announced that it will no longer produce investigations related to locations where deforestation is found to be occurring, but instead work with news outlets like Mongabay to collect field intelligence and then report on the findings, in a program called Places to Watch. GFW’s goal is to continue producing timely, data-driven reports spotlighting areas of recent deforestation that pose the biggest threat to the world’s remaining forests, and now aims to partner with outlets like this one to investigate: “Mongabay will be a leading contributor to this initiative by assigning journalists from their global reporting network to follow up on alerts and produce original news stories which add insight, character and context to Places to Watch,” according to their statement about it. Mongabay correspondents will report on these alerts from all over the tropics for its Forest Trackers series, but we are particularly looking for reporters in these regions: Southeast Asia (Laos, Cambodia, The Philippines) Oceania (Australia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands) Central Africa (Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cameroon, Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic) West Africa (Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone) South America (Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela) Central America (Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua) If you are a writer based in the tropics and are available for assignments to investigate alerts from Places to Watch for Mongabay, in the countries listed above or elsewhere, please share your details here. Banner image: Map produced using GFW’s tools for a recent feature in the Forest Trackers series in Cameroon, where a rubber plantation was found to have expanded into 127 square kilometers of primary...
Mongabay in the News, March 2019
The top impression for Mongabay in the media last month was Reuters reporting on our exposé about a Chinese bank-funded dam in endangered orangutan habitat allegedly relying on forged permits: their report was sent across the newswires and republished. Chief Brazil correspondent Sue Branford was interviewed by the large National Public Radio (U.S.) environment show, Living on Earth, about the new Brazilian President’s plan to open indigenous reserves to mining without their consent, hear their conversation that aired across 250 radio stations here. Our reporting also appears beyond the bounds of our main website and its multiple language subdomains when other outlets republish our articles, such as the report about forests absorbing more CO2 as emissions rise that appeared in the Asia Times. Mongabay reports are regularly republished like this under our Creative Commons license, and we encourage other media outlets to use our features in their own publications (review our reuse policy and guidelines here). Here’s a selection of outlets our reporting was republished, cited, or re-reported by during March 2019: Animal Politico, Asia Times, Asian Correspondent, Breaking Belize News, CNBC-TV, Carbon Brief, Chiapas Paralelo, China Dialogue, El Colombiano, El Comercio, Common Dreams, The Dodo, Earth.com, Eco-Business, Ecowatch, FM-Bolivia, FirstPost, Forbes, The Guardian, The Hans-India, Huffpost India, India Blooms, India Times, Indigenous News, Lado B, Living on Earth, Logical Indian, Metro-Nicaragua, Millennium Post, NSS Oaxaca, National Geographic, National Geographic Australia, Pacific Standard, Pagina Siete, Periodico Central, Psychology Today, Publimetro, Reuters, Scroll, La Semana, Smithsonian, Southeast Asia Globe, Speak up for Blue Podcast, Televisa News, Truthout, and The Wire. Banner image of a hyrax in Namibia by Rhett A....
