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About Mongabay

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With more than one million unique visitors per month, Mongabay.com is one of the world's most popular environmental science and conservation news sites. The news and rainforests sections of the site are widely cited for information on tropical forests, conservation, and wildlife.

Mongabay aims to raise interest in wildlife and wildlands while promoting awareness of environmental issues. Originally the site was based around a text on tropical rainforests written by Rhett A. Butler, but today the site has expanded to a range of other topics — like Madagascar — and is available in more than three dozen non-English languages. Mongabay is also publisher of Tropical Conservation Science, a peer-reviewed, open-access academic journal that seeks to provide opportunities for scientists in developing countries to publish their research.

Mongabay has been featured in the San Francisco Chronicle, Time Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and other local, national and international publications.


Who is Mongabay?
Mongabay was founded in 1999 by Rhett A. Butler out of his passion for nature and wildlife.

Since 2005, other people have become actively involved with Mongabay, including Jeremy Hance, who became Mongabay's first employee in March 2009; Tina Butler, who wrote feature articles in 2005; Alejandro Estrada, co-founder of Mongabay's peer-reviewed, open-access, and multi-lingual academic journal Tropical Conservation Science (TCS); and Tiffany Roufs, who currently serves as the Special Reporting Initiatives coordinator under Mongabay.org. Other authors and translators have contributed as well and their contributions are acknowledged on their work.


Mongabay staff - 2015
  • Rhett A. Butler , founder, president, and writer/editor
  • Jeremy Hance , senior writer/editor
  • Morgan Erickson-Davis , writer/editor
  • Tiffany Roufs , project coordinator
  • Rebecca Kessler, contributing editor
  • Glenn Scherer, contributing editor
  • Philip Jacobson, contributing editor – Indonesia
  • Brittany Stewart , administrative assistant
  • María Ángeles Salazar, translation coordinator

  • Mongabay-Indonesia staff
  • Ridzki Sigit, Director
  • Nur Rochmani Fajar, Editor
  • Sapariah Saturi Harsono, Senior Editor
  • Akhyari Hananto, Outreach coordinator
  • Rahmadi Rahmadi, Editor

  • Contributors and interns
  • Mongabay.com
  • Mongabay-Indonesia

    See Mongabay.org for staff bios.



  • Mongabay funding
    Mongabay.com and WildMadagascar.org are primarily (over 95 percent) funded through advertising. Some revenue comes from licensing photos and other content.

    To expand Mongabay's reach and impact, in 2012 Rhett founded Mongabay.org, a 501(c)3 non-profit based in California. Mongabay.org has several program areas: an environmental reporting prize, K-8 education, and non-English environmental news reporting and translation, including Monagbay-Indonesia, an Indonesian-language environmental news service. In October 2013, Mongabay's news reporting and production (news.mongabay.com) was shifted over to Mongabay.org to better ensure its sustainability.

    Mongabay.org is funded primarily through donations and grants. Advertising accounts for roughly 10 percent the news section's income.

    To learn more about Mongabay.org's initiatives, please visit Mongabay.org. We are grateful for any support readers can provide.


    Site Credibility
    Whenever possible, Mongabay uses peer-reviewed journals and scientists as sources of information for environmental science articles. The site has been recognized as an important and credible information source on forests and biodiversity by individuals at a wide range of institutions, from NGOs to government agencies to private sector entities.


    More information:
    Contribute
    Copyright & Use
    Contact
    Newsletter
    RSS feeds
    Press Coverage
    Mission of the Site
    More about Rhett
    FAQs/Interview with Rhett
    T-Shirts from Mongabay
    Tropical Conservation Science
    Advertising on Mongabay



    Press mentions
    Since September 2005, mongabay.com has been mentioned on occasion in the media.
    Over the years Rhett has provided assistance and advice for a number of nonprofit and for-profit organizations — including Google, Discovery, the Wildlife Conservation Society, Conservation International, the BBC, Discovery, National Geographic and the Prince's Rainforest Project, among others — but Mongabay itself is independent: it is not affiliated with other groups. Rhett has also provided comment on a number of subjects for TV, radio, print, and web media. Mongabay.com has been used as a source by the BBC, CNN, CBS, the Discovery Channel, National Geographic, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Wall Street Journal, Fortune Magazine, NBC, UPI, Yahoo, Bloomberg, Business Week, and many other outlets.


    Contacting mongabay.com
    Mongabay is best be contacted
    via email.

    Our mailing address is P.O. Box 0291, Menlo Park, CA 94026-0291.


    Visitors to mongabay.com
    According to Google Analytics, mongabay.com averaged more than 3 million unique visitors per month in 2019. Mongabay-Indonesia and WildMadagacar.org together averaged more than a million monthly unique visitors.

    Note: More than half of mongabay traffic comes from outside the United States


    Offsetting greenhouse gas emissions
    Carbon dioxide gas emissions generated through the operation of mongabay.com (including server, data transfer, and travel) are mitigated through carbon credits purchased from Anthrotect, an organization working with Afro-indigenous and Embera communities to protect forests in Colombia's Darien region. Anthrotect is protecting the habitat of mongabay's mascot: the scale-crested pygmy tyrant.