News and Inspiration from Nature’s Frontline
Mongabay operates a widely popular conservation news and environmental science website that focuses on issues related to forests, wildlife, and oceans.
Mongabay also runs Mongabay-Indonesia, a successful Indonesian-language environmental news service; WildMadagascar.org, a site that highlights the biological and cultural richness of Madagascar; and Tropical Conservation Science, an open-access journal that provides opportunities for scientists in tropical countries to publish their research.
Croeni Charity supported Mongabay with several grants aimed at raising awareness through high quality environmental news.
Impact
One of our Mongabay grants was used to develop the 2016 Almost Famous Asian Animal Series. This series is an outgrowth of the 2015 Almost Famous Mongabay Reporting Network initiative whose goal was to raise awareness about the fight for survival of little known animal species and to rally people to their cause.
The Almost Famous Asian Animal Series consists of 20 articles published to date and it introduces the readers to threatened species throughout Asia, including the Indian tropics and subtropics, the cold climes of the Himalayas and Russian steppe, China and Southeast Asia, Indonesia and the Philippines.
The stories present innovative conservation programs currently underway to save the species, along with the details of the total amount of funding it would take to permanently protect them. Equally important, the articles aim not only at providing information, but also at capturing the public imagination and firing up people to do their part to conserve the species.
Each Article Communicates
- What is fascinating about the species’ lifestyle and lifecycle?
- Why is this animal endangered?
- Why should people care about the species?
- Who is trying to save the animal?
- What is the outlook?
Key Impact Data
- 20 articles in the series, 16 of which were funded through our grant.
- The series was written by 15 Mongabay contributors from around the world.
- Each piece comes at around 2,000 words and often includes amazing photos directly from the scientists’ field research, published for the first time. The total word count for all the stories tops more than 40,000 words.
- More than 50 animal species are covered, including 26 primates, 7 birds, 2 smaller cats, 3 large mammals, 1 amphibian, 2 reptiles, a variety of threatened Asian bats, and 1 fish.
- By the end of 2016, the articles were visited more than 72,000 times, reached 700,000 people on Facebook and accumulated over 25,000 likes and shares. They were also republished in Down To Earth, the Huffington Post, and Scroll, and referenced in The Guardian, Mother Nature News, and Vientiane Times.
It is impossible for the Almost Famous series to profile a significant number of the earth’s critically endangered species (the 2016 IUCN Red List contained 24,307 species threatened with extinction), but it does provide a crucially important service nevertheless: it shines light on the struggle of little known animals at great risk, and will hopefully motivate people from around the world to take an interest in conserving these species, along with their vital habitats.
Croeni Charity 