Rhett Butler

Ted Turner, who died on May 6th, liked to present himself as a businessman who had simply applied the same habits to a larger subject. First he bought a struggling billboard company and made it work. Then he built a television empire, beginning with CNN in 1980. After that, he turned much of his attention […]

In the coming months, voters in Brazil, Peru, and Colombia will elect new presidents. Together, these three countries contain roughly 82% of the Amazon rainforest, making their elections consequential far beyond national borders. The future of the world’s largest tropical forest — and, by extension, global climate stability — will depend in large measure on […]

Ocean philanthropy remains a small field. Funding directed specifically toward ocean-climate solutions is smaller still. At last week’s “Sea Change” panel on ocean-climate solutions in Asia, convened as part of the Philanthropy Asia Summit, the discussion kept returning to this mismatch: the ocean is central to the climate transition, yet ocean-climate philanthropy remains a rounding […]

For protected areas in the Brazilian Amazon, one of the most basic questions is not where the boundary lies. It is whether anyone has the money to manage what sits inside it. A reserve may exist in law. It may appear on maps, in international pledges, and in official counts of how much of Brazil […]

Thomas Crowther’s career has been shaped by large claims about small things. A seed, a patch of soil, a soundscape, a moment of fear, a local restoration project: each, in his telling, can become part of a larger system of cause and effect. His new book, Nature’s Echo, is built around that idea. Feedback loops, […]

Over more than two decades, researchers have recorded "perro fantasma", or ghost dog, in Bolivia’s lowland Amazonian forests.

Satellite alerts suggest deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon is continuing to fall, putting the country on pace for one of its lowest forest-clearing years in more than a decade. The decline comes as climate scientists warn that a likely strong El Niño could still bring a difficult fire season, even if clear-cutting remains low. […]

At night on Mansouri beach, the first evidence was often a track in the sand. The beach lies south of Tyre, near the border with Israel, where checkpoints, shelling, and evacuation orders have long shaped daily life. It is also one of Lebanon’s important nesting grounds for loggerhead and green sea turtles. The turtles come […]

A new BioScience paper argues that tropical field stations can help turn global conservation commitments into local action.