About Mongabay
Note: this page is out of date. Current information here
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.
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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:
Press mentions
Since September 2005, mongabay.com has been mentioned on occasion in the media.
- Zoe magazine (Italy), September 2005 coverage.
- CNN, September 2005. Mongabay used as a reference for in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
- The San Francisco Chronicle, July 2006 profile of the site.
- TreeHugger.com, August 2006 interview.
- The Wall Street Journal Online, September 2006 mention.
- BMI voyager magazine, June 2007 mention.
- Inc Magazine, August 2007 mention.
- Google Blog, October 2007 profile.
- OpenRoad.TV, November 2007 video interview.
- The Wall Street Journal Online, January 2008 mention.
- Chicago Public Radio, January 2008 radio interview on "The Dark Side of Biofuels".
- Time.com, In April 2008, Time.com selected mongabay.com among its 15 top climate and environment web sites.
- Voice of America, In November 2008, VOA did a radio segment on mongabay.com.
- Change.org, In January 2010, Change.org did a post about mongabay.com.
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.