Mongabay

Etymology

Rhett Ayers Butler, 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. He goes on to note that it is best known as "a preserve for the Aye-aye, a rare and unusual lemur famous for its bizarre appearance".

Recognition

In 2008 Mongabay was named one of the top fifteen environmental websites by Time.

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, NBC, UPI, Yahoo!, and other such outlets.

Revenue

All of mongabay.com's content is free thanks to the 1.3 million unique visitors per month as of January 2008. In 2008 Butler said that the traffic brings 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) organization, to support Mongabay's education program and non-English reporting initiatives as well as expand its environmental reporting initiatives, including grants for journalists.

Academic journals

Mongabay.com publishes the Tropical Conservation Science, a peer-reviewed, open-access academic journal on the conservation of tropical forests and of other tropical ecosystems. 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.

Other websites

On May 19, 2012, Mongabay.com launched an Indonesian language affiliate at mongabay.co.id.

Non-profit

Mongabayorg Corporation (Mongabay.org) is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) charitable organization headquartered in Menlo Park, California that raises awareness about social and environmental issues relating to forests and other ecosystems. Founded in 2012 by Rhett Ayers Butler, Mongabay.org was established as the non-profit arm of Mongabay.com, an environmental science and conservation news web site launched in 1999. In 2014, Mongabay.com's news production was shifted under Mongabay.org.

By November 2015, Mongabay.org had three main program areas: environmental news production in English, Indonesian, and Spanish; Tropical Conservation Science, an open-access academic journal; and K-8 education. The Bay Area Tropical Forest Network, a social network in the San Francisco Bay Area, is an additional project under Mongabay.org.

Mongabay.org depends on grants and donations for nearly all of its revenue. Advertising revenue provides a small source of additional income.

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.

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 deforestation, 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 magazine as one of the best "green websites". In 2014, Mongabay.org Founder Rhett Ayers Butler became the first journalist to win the Field Museum'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".

Finances

Mongabay.org relies primary on grants and donations to fund its activities. Most grants come from philanthropic organizations like the Ford Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Less than one percent of the organization's revenue comes from advertising.

Mongabay.org's network-based approach allows it to run a lean operation 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 amounted to 2.9 percent in 2013, while fundraising costs came in at 2.2 percent. In 2014, revenue reached $910,569

Leadership

Mongabay.org is governed by its Board of Directors, which consists of several members. Anthropologist Brodie David Ferguson is Chairman of the Board. Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler is a member of the board.

Mongabay.org also has a non-governing Advisory Board, which includes biologist Peter H. Raven, primatologist Jane Goodall, and William F. Laurance.

Operationally, Mongabay.org is run by Butler, who serves as CEO and Executive Director. Butler started Mongabay.com, an environmental science and conservation news web site that today serves as the distribution platform for content produced under Mongabay.org, out of his passion for nature