Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries.
When Mongabay Latam began publishing in 2016, the aim was to establish a sustained environmental news service for Spanish-speaking Latin America. The newsroom would be led by editors in the region, work with journalists who understood the places they covered, and develop its own editorial priorities in response to local conditions.
Over the decade that followed, Mongabay Latam’s staff and contributors built that newsroom. They developed a daily news service covering forests, oceans, wildlife, science, Indigenous rights, environmental crime, and the people responding to ecological change. They formed more than 90 partnerships with national newspapers, regional publications, and independent media, allowing stories to reach audiences far beyond Mongabay’s own platforms.
The team also built the relationships and expertise required for more ambitious investigations. Working with organizations including CLIP, Animal Político, Rutas del Conflicto, Plaza Pública, and El Espectador, Mongabay Latam has investigated illegal mining, land grabbing, wildlife trafficking, deforestation, and the role of organized crime in some of the region’s most threatened landscapes.
Last month in Bogotá, the strength of what the team has created was visible in another form.
To mark its tenth anniversary, Mongabay Latam hosted PUMA FEST, a gathering organized with Fundación Gabo ahead of the 14th Gabo Festival. Around 700 people registered, and 400 attended in person. Journalists, editors, Indigenous communicators, students, scientists, and other specialists took part in ten talks, six workshops, and a networking session focused on the practical demands of environmental reporting.
The response was extraordinary. Sessions were full, discussions continued outside the meeting rooms, and participants arrived with a clear appetite for deeper reporting, new methods, and greater collaboration across borders. The enthusiasm reflected a relationship that the newsroom has developed over years of consistent work.
Among those attending were members of the Puma Network, or Journalists United for the Environment, which Mongabay Latam established in 2025 to support collaboration among reporters across the region. The gathering also included 25 Indigenous journalists from Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia who have participated in a training program led by the team during the past two years.
These initiatives are part of a broader contribution to the region’s information ecosystem. Mongabay Latam produces journalism, but it also helps reporters develop skills in investigations, satellite analysis, data reporting, multimedia production, and cross-border collaboration. It works with other newsrooms rather than treating distribution and influence as something Mongabay must control.
During the Gabo Festival, the team presented Los Vuelos de la Muerte at Bogotá’s Gimnasio Moderno theater. The performance grew out of Mongabay Latam’s investigation into clandestine airstrips used by drug traffickers in the Peruvian Amazon. The original reporting combined satellite imagery, artificial intelligence, drone footage, official records, field reporting, and more than 60 interviews. Onstage, that work became a production centered on the experiences of Indigenous communities living with the consequences of the drug economy. It was also broadcast live on Bogotá’s Canal Capital.
Mongabay Latam’s editorial direction, reporting relationships, and institutional knowledge have been built in Latin America by journalists from the region. Its reputation rests on hundreds of investigations, daily reports, interviews, videos, partnerships, and field assignments. PUMA FEST showed how widely that work is valued.
I am deeply grateful to the present and former members of the Mongabay Latam team, its contributors, partners, and sources. We hope to hold the next PUMA FEST in 2028. A biennial gathering would give new investigations, methods, and collaborations time to develop between editions. The turnout in Bogotá showed that there is already substantial demand for a regional forum devoted to environmental journalism.
