Mongabay (mongabay.com) is a conservation news web portal that reports on

environmental science Environmental science is an interdisciplinary academic field that integrates physics, biology, and geography (including ecology, chemistry, plant science, zoology, mineralogy, oceanography, limnology, soil science, geology and physical geog ...

energy In physics, energy (from Ancient Greek: ἐνέργεια, ''enérgeia'', “activity”) is the quantitative property that is transferred to a body or to a physical system, recognizable in the performance of work and in the form of ...

, and

green design Environmentally sustainable design (also called environmentally conscious design, eco-design, etc.) is the philosophy of designing physical objects, the built environment, and services to comply with the principles of ecological sustainability ...

, and features extensive information on tropical rainforests, including pictures and

deforestation Deforestation or forest clearance is the removal of a forest or stand of trees from land that is then converted to non-forest use. Deforestation can involve conversion of forest land to farms, ranches, or urban use. The most concentrated ...

statistics for countries of the world. It was founded in 1999 by economist Rhett Ayers Butler in order to increase "interest in and appreciation of wildlands and

wildlife Wildlife refers to undomesticated animal species, but has come to include all organisms that grow or live wild in an area without being introduced by humans. Wildlife was also synonymous to game: those birds and mammals that were hunted ...

, while examining the impact of emerging local and global trends in technology, economics, and finance on conservation and development". In recent years, to complement its US-based team, Mongabay has opened bureaus in Indonesia, Latin America, and India, reporting daily in Indonesian, Spanish, and English respectively. Mongabay's reporting is available in nine languages.

History

In an interview with Conjour, Butler said his passion for rainforests drove him to start Mongabay: "I was intrigued by the complexity of these ecosystems and how every species seemed to play a part. As I became more passionate about rainforests, I grew more concerned about their fate, including the threats they face."

Etymology

The founder of the website explains that "mongabay" originated from an anglicized spelling and pronunciation of Nosy Mangabe, an island off the coast of

Madagascar Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Afric ...

. He goes on to note that it is best known as "a preserve for the

Aye-aye The aye-aye (''Daubentonia madagascariensis'') is a long-fingered lemur, a strepsirrhine primate native to Madagascar with rodent-like teeth that perpetually grow and a special thin middle finger. It is the world's largest nocturnal primate. ...

, a rare and unusual

lemur Lemurs ( ) (from Latin ''lemures'' – ghosts or spirits) are wet-nosed primates of the superfamily Lemuroidea (), divided into 8 families and consisting of 15 genera and around 100 existing species. They are endemic to the island of Madagas ...

famous for its bizarre appearance".

Business model

Mongabay.com is independent and unaffiliated with any organization. The site has been used as an information source by CNN, CBS, the

Discovery Channel Discovery Channel (known as The Discovery Channel from 1985 to 1995, and often referred to as simply Discovery) is an American cable channel owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, a publicly traded company run by CEO David Zaslav. , Discovery Chan ...

, NBC, UPI,

Yahoo! Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Mana ...

, and other such outlets.

Revenue

All of Mongabay's content is free to access on its site, thanks to the volumes of visitors per month - as of January 2008, 2.5 million. In 2008, Butler said that the traffic brought the site $15,000 to $18,000 a month from AdSense, but the decline in advertising revenue across the environmental media sector after the financial crisis, sharply reduced the site's income. In 2012, Butler launched mongabay.org, a

501(c)(3) A 501(c)(3) organization is a United States corporation, trust, unincorporated association or other type of organization exempt from federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) of Title 26 of the United States Code. It is one of the 29 types of ...

organization, to support Mongabay's education program and non-English reporting initiatives as well as expand its environmental reporting initiatives, including grants for journalists. Mongabay phased out advertising on its news content in 2017.

Publications

Academic journals

Mongabay.com formerly published ''Tropical Conservation Science'', a

peer-review Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work ( peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer revie ...

ed, open-access

academic journal An academic journal or scholarly journal is a periodical publication in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as permanent and transparent forums for the presentation, scrutiny, and ...

on the

conservation Conservation is the preservation or efficient use of resources, or the conservation of various quantities under physical laws. Conservation may also refer to: Environment and natural resources * Nature conservation, the protection and manageme ...

tropical forest Tropical forests (a.k.a. jungle) are forested landscapes in tropical regions: ''i.e.'' land areas approximately bounded by the tropic of Cancer and Capricorn, but possibly affected by other factors such as prevailing winds. Some tropical fore ...

s and of other tropical

ecosystem An ecosystem (or ecological system) consists of all the organisms and the physical environment with which they interact. These biotic and abiotic components are linked together through nutrient cycles and energy flows. Energy enters the syst ...

s. Since its inception in 2008, it has four issues a year, in March, June, September, and December. It used to provide opportunities for scientists in developing countries to publish their research in their native languages, but as of September 2012, ''Tropical Conservation Science'' publishes papers only in

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...

. It has been published by

SAGE Publications SAGE Publishing, formerly SAGE Publications, is an American independent publishing company founded in 1965 in New York by Sara Miller McCune and now based in Newbury Park, California. It publishes more than 1,000 journals, more than 800 books ...

since August 2016 and Mongabay no longer has any affiliation.

Other websites

On May 19, 2012, Mongabay.com launched an

Indonesian language Indonesian ( ) is the official and national language of Indonesia. It is a standardized variety of Malay, an Austronesian language that has been used as a lingua franca in the multilingual Indonesian archipelago for centuries. Indonesia ...

affiliate.Mongabay.co.id
"Situs Berita dan Informasi Lingkungan"
"Mongabay-Indonesia'', 11 November 2015. Retrieved on 11 November 2015. In June 2016, Mongabay launched a Spanish-language news service in Latin America. And in January 2018, an Indian website was launched. In 2019, Mongabay established Mongabay-Brasil, a Portuguese-language bureau staffed by Brazilians. Those were followed by Hindi and French sites.

Non-profit

The Mongabayorg Corporation is a

nonprofit A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...

charitable organization headquartered in

Menlo Park, California Menlo Park is a city at the eastern edge of San Mateo County within the San Francisco Bay Area of California in the United States. It is bordered by San Francisco Bay on the north and east; East Palo Alto, Palo Alto, and Stanford to the south ...

that raises awareness about social and environmental issues relating to forests and other ecosystems. Mongabay.org was established in 2012 as the non-profit arm of Mongabay.com, an

and

news web site launched in 1999.Guynn, Jessica
"A site of inspiration"
''

San Francisco Chronicle The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and Michael H. de Young. The pa ...

'', 5 July 2006. Retrieved on 17 November 2015. In 2014, Mongabay.com's news production was shifted under Mongabay.org.Butler, Rhett
"Shifting to a non-profit model for environmental news reporting"
'' Mongabay.com'', 29 October 2013. Retrieved on 11 November 2015. By November 2022, Mongabay.org had three main program areas: environmental news production in

, Indonesian, Spanish, Portuguese,

Hindi Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been ...

, and

French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...

; capacity-building programs for journalists including paid fellowships, and K-8 education. The Bay Area Tropical Forest Network, a social network in the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area G ...

, was an additional project under Mongabay.org that ran from 2009 until 2019, hosting over 100 in-person events at dozens of venues. Mongabay.org is a member of the Global Investigative Journalism Network.

History

Mongabay.org was founded in 2012 by conservation journalist Rhett Ayers Butler. Butler established the non-profit due to his desire to expand the scope of Mongabay's environmental science and conservation news service. By mid-2020, Mongabay was receiving 7 million unique visitors a month on its Mongabay.com and Mongabay.co.id web sites. The first project under Mongabay.org was Mongabay-Indonesia, an Indonesian-language environmental news service run by a team of journalists in Indonesia. Within a year of launch, Mongabay-Indonesia was the most widely read Indonesian-language environmental news service. By 2015, the site was drawing more than 500,000 unique visitors per month and had correspondents in more than 30 cities and towns across the archipelago. Butler applied the Mongabay-Indonesia model to Mongabay's global operation in 2014, launching a network-based approach to covering environmental stories in English. The pilot project focused on using data from Global Forest Watch to develop stories about what was happening on the ground the world's forests, including

, conversion to plantations, and conservation. After the nine-month pilot produced over 180 stories in more than 40 countries, including articles that generated significant interest in policy circles, the project was expanded to a range of other topics. The network of paid English-language correspondents reached 50 by mid-2015. Mongabay.org also provides small grants to journalists to help with travel and reporting costs for stories published in high-profile third party media.

Acknowledgements and awards

In 2008, Mongabay was named by ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and event (philosophy), events that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various me ...

'' magazine as one of the best "green websites". In 2014, the founder Rhett Ayers Butler became the first journalist to win the

Field Museum The Field Museum of Natural History (FMNH), also known as The Field Museum, is a natural history museum in Chicago, Illinois, and is one of the largest such museums in the world. The museum is popular for the size and quality of its educational ...

's Parker-Gentry Award for contributions "in the field of conservation biology whose efforts have had a significant impact on preserving the world's natural heritage and whose actions and approach can serve as a model to others". The website was also the winner of a Science Seeker award in the environment category. Mongabay founder Rhett Butler was selected as a winner of the 2020 SEAL Environmental Journalism Awar

In September 2022, Mongabay founder Rhett Butler was selected as a winner of the 27th Heinz Awards, Heinz Award for advancing environmental journalism worldwide.

Finances

Mongabay.org relies primary on grants and donations to fund its activities.Mongabay.org
"Mongabay.org Annual Report 2013"
'' Mongabay.org'', 2014. Retrieved on 11 November 2015. Most grants come from philanthropic organizations like the

Ford Foundation The Ford Foundation is an American private foundation with the stated goal of advancing human welfare. Created in 1936 by Edsel Ford and his father Henry Ford, it was originally funded by a US$25,000 gift from Edsel Ford. By 1947, after the death ...

and the

John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is a private foundation that makes grants and impact investments to support non-profit organizations in approximately 50 countries around the world. It has an endowment of $7.0 billion and ...

. Less than one percent of the organization's revenue came from advertising in 2014.Mongabay.org
"Mongabay.org Annual Report 2014"
'' Mongabay.org'', 2015. Retrieved on 11 November 2015. Mongabay.org's network-based approach allows it to run with a small staff relative to its volume of content production. In 2013, Mongabay.org reported total revenue of $528,128, a five-fold increase from its 2012 revenue of $92,319.

Overhead costs In business, overhead or overhead expense refers to an ongoing expense of operating a business. Overheads are the expenditure which cannot be conveniently traced to or identified with any particular revenue unit, unlike operating expenses such as r ...

amounted to 2.9 percent in 2013, while

fundraising Fundraising or fund-raising is the process of seeking and gathering voluntary financial contributions by engaging individuals, businesses, charitable foundations, or governmental agencies. Although fundraising typically refers to efforts to gathe ...

costs came in at 2.2 percent. Revenue in 2014 reached $910,569, while in 2015, it hit $1.3 million. In 2017, total revenue eclipsed $2 million.

Programs

As of May 5, 2021, Mongabay had several program areas under the non-profit, including: Global English News; Mongabay-India (environmental news on India in English and

); Mongabay-Latam (Spanish-language environmental news in Latin America), Mongabay-Brasil (Portuguese-language environmental news on Brazil); Mongabay-Indonesia (environmental news on Indonesia in

Bahasa Indonesia Indonesian ( ) is the official and national language of Indonesia. It is a standardized variety of Malay, an Austronesian language that has been used as a lingua franca in the multilingual Indonesian archipelago for centuries. Indonesia is t ...

); Mongabay Education (environmental education content for pre-K through high school); and internships and fellowships.

Efficiency and accountability

As of April 29, 2021, Mongabay.org had a 100/100 score on

Charity Navigator Charity Navigator is a charity assessment organization that evaluates hundreds of thousands of charitable organizations based in the United States, operating as a free 501(c)(3) organization. It provides insights into a nonprofit’s financial ...

's Encompass Rating System, which evaluates a nonprofit organization’s financial health including measures of stability, efficiency and sustainability as well as its accountability and transparency policies. Mongabay.org had a Guidestar Platinum Transparency rating, which according to the Guidestar " emonstratesits commitment to transparency.

Leadership

Mongabay.org is governed by its board of directors, which consists of several members. The founder is a member of the board. Operationally, Butler, serves as CEO and executive director.Meehan, Emily
"Not Letting Success Get to Your Head"
''

The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

'', 8 September 2006. Retrieved on 17 November 2015. Mongabay.org also has a non-governing advisory board, which includes

biologist A biologist is a scientist who conducts research in biology. Biologists are interested in studying life on Earth, whether it is an individual cell, a multicellular organism, or a community of interacting populations. They usually specialize ...

Peter H. Raven, primatologist

Jane Goodall Dame Jane Morris Goodall (; born Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall on 3 April 1934), formerly Baroness Jane van Lawick-Goodall, is an English primatologist and anthropologist. Seen as the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees, Goodall is best kn ...

, and William F. Laurance.

References

External links

MongabayMongabay.orgMongabay-IndonesiaTropical Conservation ScienceBay Area Tropical Forest Network
American environmental websites Internet properties established in 1999 Nature conservation in Indonesia Environmental organizations based in the San Francisco Bay Area Charities based in California 1999 establishments in California