Mongabay’s most successful videos are about weird animals.
But not every video from the environmental newsroom can be about strange — or strangely cute — animals. Some have to be about shrimp farm pollution. Or a deforestation crisis brought on by cacao farming in Liberia. That’s where the challenge comes in, Mongabay video managing editor Lucia Torres has found. Turning that kind of journalism into something people stop scrolling for isn’t easy.
“Generally mass audiences are less interested in environmental content on YouTube [and] Instagram,” Torres said. “We have to compete with recipes, music videos, etc.”
Mongabay, founded in 1999 by Rhett Butler as a one-person news operation covering rainforests, now has 150 people on staff. It produces original content in English, Indonesian, Spanish, French, Hindi, Portuguese, Bengali, and Swahili. Mongabay’s largest bureaus — after the catch-all “global” newsroom — cover Africa (20 people) and Latin America (19 people). Mongabay has about 83,000 followers on Instagram and its English-language YouTube channel has 60,000 subscribers. It also has country-specific channels; Mongabay Indonesia has 109,000 followers.
Mongabay publishes around 150 to 200 videos a year with a team of four full-time and one half-time producers. These include short vertical videos on YouTube Shorts and Instagram; evergreen explainers around “complex enviro-problems”; twice-monthly features; and lengthy investigations or short documentaries.
To reach new audiences with its environmental journalism, Mongabay started experimenting with behind-the-scenes reels in late 2024. At the time, Mongabay’s Instagram reels averaged 2,000 to 3,000 views. Torres said she was inspired by behind-the-scenes videos from National Geographic, The New York Times, ProPublica, and contributing creator Izzy Sasada. The first behind-the-scenes video — on pollution from those shrimp farms — drew about 14,000 views. Additional videos from California and Indonesia each got about 6,000 views. Mongabay started to dive deeper with videos that featured sources and reporters filming from the field.
From the initial tests, it became clear to Torres that the best-performing videos were ones with behind-the-scenes footage from investigations or collaborations. Putting reporters on camera — in the field or at their desks — worked.
“The content [on platforms like Instagram] is dominated now by individual content creators,” said Torres, who is currently a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. She said Mongabay is “still figuring out how we can create personalities or creators within the organizations that represent what Mongabay does — that are good journalists but also good at talking in front of the camera.”
Another successful example came with Mongabay’s investigation into vanishing forests in Liberia. The piece ran as a long-form article, a lengthy YouTube video, and a behind-the-scenes short.
Mongabay now plans its multimedia packages for big investigative stories from the beginning, starting with behind-the-scenes footage.
This takes work and communication across the newsroom. “They require cross-team, high-level collaborations,” Torres said. “You really have to think about all the elements you are going to use before starting production so when you’re in the field you get everything you need.”
Not everything has panned out. Last year, Mongabay tried a data visualization series on climate data. It didn’t work. The lessons for the newsroom went beyond video.
“People are sick and tired of doomer content, and they also don’t like ‘climate stories,’” Torres said. “The simple mention of ‘climate’ scares them away.”
CEO and founder Rhett Butler has seen the same thing across Mongabay’s journalism.
“We’re seeing strong evidence that doomer stories are resonating less with our audiences,” he said. “Climate stories — especially those focused on disasters or the climate emergency — tend to garner less interest than other topics.” The ones that do well, he added, have “an ecosystem or wildlife angle, give readers a sense of agency, or present a solution.”
Mongabay has responded by introducing more projects and series focused on solutions journalism, like Indigenous-led conservation, agroecology, and conservation technology.
“We’ve also been sharing data with the newsroom about which kinds of framing are reaching more people right now, so writers and editors can consider whether they might want to incorporate how people are responding to problems into their stories,” Butler said. “But we aren’t overly prescriptive, so ultimately it’s up to editors and writers how they use this information.”
Looking at the 3,422 articles published between June 1, 2025 and August 31, 2026, Butler found that the median story featuring hope or a solution got 41% more traffic than articles that only described the crisis or threat. (Articles classified as being about an “action confronting a threat” got 43% more.)
Today, 71% of the 100 most-read stories on Mongabay’s English-language site can be classified as “hope / solution / agency” or “action confronting a threat,” Butler said. Only 21% were “doom only.”
The video team has done something similar. The environmental newsroom’s short series Strange Creatures leads with “the wonder of wild creatures first,” Torres noted. The conservation or endangered species angle follows.
“We’ve stopped framing stories as a climate problem, and started framing stories from a solutions-oriented, action-driven perspective, community-first, or fun-stuff first,” Torres said. “Climate is implicit now in the stories.”
What video won’t be, at least for now, is a revenue generator. Almost all of Mongabay’s revenue comes from contributions and grants, according to its annual report. (Events, licensing, and advertising “are insignificant at this point,” Butler said.)
“I’m not bullish on video becoming a material source of revenue for Mongabay, given how the space has evolved and our position in it,” Butler said. “Ten years ago I was a lot more optimistic on that front.”
Part of the problem, he said, is incentives. “Building a video strategy around advertising creates an incentive to prioritize views, which may not align with our broader organizational emphasis on impact,” Butler said. “The stories that attract the largest audiences aren’t necessarily those most likely to inform decisions or prompt action.”
