Mongabay founder reflects on success, Jane Goodall, and more
Release Date: 11/04/2025
Historic fire seasons are the ‘new normal’ without ‘serious action’ on climate change
Mongabay Newscast
Elizabeth Goldman is a co-director of , previously known as Global Forest Watch, a database measuring forest loss that’s frequently cited in Mongabay reporting. She joins this week’s podcast to detail GNW’s updated 25-year of global forest fire trends. The picture is stark: Forest fires burn twice as much forest today as they did 20 years ago, and historic fire seasons are the “new normal,” she says. “Catastrophic, large-scale fires are becoming more of a normal. The last three years are the worst three years in the record-keeping in our data set,” Goldman says. “Fires now...
info_outline
The ‘quiet revolution’ inspired by Delhi’s urban wildlife
Mongabay Newscast
In her upcoming book, , conservation biologist Neha Sinha takes readers to the hidden and not-so-hidden ecosystems of India’s largest city. And while the book expertly details the biodiversity, I believe its greatest strength lies in connecting with the reader emotionally through powerful stories from her personal life. On this week’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast, Sinha explains why nature in cities isn’t just important from an ecosystem health perspective, but necessary for the emotional life of all people. Sinha describes the difficulty of caring for her ailing father, and how this...
info_outline
Why are forests in Liberia disappearing?
Mongabay Newscast
On this week’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we speak with features writer Ashoka Mukpo, who traveled to southeastern Liberia to investigate what satellite images indicated was a spike in deforestation over a relatively concentrated period. Along with video production coordinator Juan Maza, Mukpo illegal cacao plantations in the rainforests in the county of Grand Gedeh. In this interview, he explains how and these plantations are appearing now in Liberia. “What we saw … probably the best metaphor for it is that there's a kind of gold rush happening in this part of Liberia, except...
info_outline
Oil has brought destruction to the Niger Delta; women and human rights may save it
Mongabay Newscast
On this week’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast, I speak with travel writer . She has documented the violence and natural destruction that the presence of oil companies have brought to the people of the Niger Delta in her latest book, . Saro-Wiwa is also the daughter of the late activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, who was executed by the Nigerian government in 1995. Her father led a peaceful resistance against the oil companies' presence in the Niger Delta by mobilizing 300,000 people from Ogoniland in 1993. It is fair to say his activism started the movement against the destruction and exploitation led...
info_outline
The Mediterranean Sea’s beauty hides an ecosystem under pressure
Mongabay Newscast
The Mediterranean Sea accounts for less than 1% of the world’s ocean surface water, but it contains roughly 18% of global marine biodiversity. It is home to 150 million people along its coastline (roughly equivalent to Russia's population). And it sequesters 17.2 million metric tons of CO2 each year. Joining the Newscast this week to talk about the unique biodiversity of the Mediterranean Sea and its threats is journalist Manuela Callari. Callari has written for Mongabay, highlighting the to purple sea urchins (Paracentrotus lividus) along the Italian coast. These marine invertebrates are...
info_outline
Wildlife crossings are having a moment
Mongabay Newscast
Nearly three years ago, Newscast guest, author and journalist Ben Goldfarb his book Crossings, which is about wildlife crossings and road ecology. Wildlife crossings help reconnect habitats fragmented by road networks, reducing collisions, helping protect threatened wildlife, and improving genetic diversity. Since that conversation, Goldfarb has the growing popularity of wildlife crossings worldwide. He returns to the Newscast to detail how, where, and why wildlife crossings are becoming increasingly funded and built. “Probably the biggest factor is that at this point, the evidence that...
info_outline
The radical plan to rethink work, wealth and planetary well-being
Mongabay Newscast
A group of more than 40 researchers spent 20 months devising a plan for the world to achieve ecological sustainability within , all while seeing incomes rise for 98% of the global population and reducing working hours for everybody by half to two and a half days a week. The plan to achieve this by 2100 is laid out in the recent “.” If it sounds utopian, Lucas Chancel, the co-director of the and editor of the report, is the first person to acknowledge this, but explains why it’s not only possible — there’s even historical precedent for many of the measures the report outlines....
info_outline
Addressing the ‘toxic legacy’ of mining in Bougainville
Mongabay Newscast
Theonila Roka Matbob grew up next to what was — at the time — the world’s largest open-pit mine in Bougainville, an autonomous island in Papua New Guinea, operated by a subsidiary of Rio Tinto. This mine wrought environmental and social devastation on the community of Panguna for decades. And many of these impacts carry on today, says Roka Matbob, who is an Indigenous Nasioi woman and politician. With the help of Jubilee Australia and the Human Rights Law Centre, Roka Matbob was able to file a legal complaint with Australia’s National Contact Point for Responsible Business Conduct. As...
info_outline
Healing the planet requires healing ourselves, says Katharine Wilkinson
Mongabay Newscast
has a Ph.D. in geography and the environment, is well known for being a co-author of the book Drawdown and co-founder of . She joins the Newscast this week to discuss her latest book . As a journalist, it’s unhelpful for me to divorce myself from the topic of this interview, as I have , time and again, the sense of “murky overwhelm” this book is specifically designed to address. But Wilkinson didn’t just write this book for journalists like myself who cover ecological crises for a living. She wrote it for readers and listeners like you. “I think we're all in our own ways grappling...
info_outline
A ‘coalition of the willing’ to urge the world to drop fossil fuels
Mongabay Newscast
A group of 57 nations mostly from the Global South, describing themselves as “coalition of the willing” intent on making the Transition Away From Fossil Fuels, or TAFF, convened in the Colombian city of Santa Marta, from April 24-29, 2026, for the . Also referred to as the “Santa Marta Coalition,” this group of countries met to discuss and develop frameworks and pathways for nations to phase out fossil fuel dependency. Joining the Mongabay Newscast this week is , a medical doctor, activist and member of the , a network of experts advocating for the as a measurement framework....
info_outlineHello listeners. This week on the Mongabay Newscast, we ask that you take a few minutes to fill out a brief survey to let us know what you think of our audio reporting, which you can do here.
Mongabay founder and CEO Rhett Butler was recently awarded the Henry Shaw Medal by the Missouri Botanical Garden and named to the 2025 Forbes Sustainability Leaders list alongside conservation greats such as David Attenborough. The credit for this success belongs to Mongabay, Butler says on this week’s podcast.
“While my name is on the award, it's for Mongabay. All that Mongabay achieves is not necessarily me. I’m the figurehead,” Butler says of receiving the Henry Shaw Medal.
Butler also shares his thoughts and reflections on the passing of his longtime friend, and conservation icon, Jane Goodall, through whom he learned to see the value in hope and optimism.
“The biggest thing I took away from my relationship with Jane … is the importance of hope,” he says. “She was truly a messenger for hope.”
You can read Butler’s obituary for Jane Goodall here.
Find the Mongabay Newscast wherever you listen to podcasts, from Apple to Spotify. All past episodes are also listed here at the Mongabay website.
Image Credit: The last photo taken between Rhett Butler and Jane Goodall, who shared a friendship for nearly 15 years, at the Forbes Sustainability Leadership Summit in New York. Image courtesy of Sofia Negron.
-----
Timecodes
(00:00) The importance of hope
(08:01) Rhett’s awards and Mongabay’s impact
(12:39) The role of independent journalism
(24:18) Expanding Mongabay's global reach
(31:44) State of the world’s forests