- Mongabay founder and CEO Rhett A. Butler has been awarded a 2020 SEAL Environmental Journalism Award in recognition of his coverage of environmental issues for the website. The honor is presented by the SEAL (Sustainability, Environmental Achievement & Leadership) Awards, an environmental advocacy organization.
- His fellow winners – at outlets ranging from The Guardian to The New York Times and The Washington Post – were selected based on each journalist’s work, a data-driven analysis of the impact and reach of their articles, and the bringing of fresh perspectives and social relevance to environmental issues, the organizers said. Butler has been publishing on Mongabay since he founded it in 1999.
- Butler established Mongabay as a U.S. non-profit news organization in 2012 and has since grown the organization to report on environmental issues in ten languages via five international bureaus which publish the work of staff writers and a network of about 800 freelance reporters in 80 countries.
- The outlet’s growth continued in 2020, reaching new heights in terms of readership – 10 million monthly readers on average.
Mongabay founder and CEO Rhett A. Butler has been awarded a 2020 SEAL Environmental Journalism Award in recognition of his coverage of environmental issues for the website. The honor is presented by the SEAL (Sustainability, Environmental Achievement & Leadership) Awards, an environmental advocacy organization.
His fellow winners – at outlets ranging from The Guardian to The New York Times and The Washington Post – were selected based on each journalist’s work, a data-driven analysis of the impact and reach of their articles, and the bringing of fresh perspectives and social relevance to environmental issues, the organizers said. Butler has been publishing on Mongabay since he founded it in 1999.
“I’m humbled to receive a 2020 SEAL Journalism Award,” Rhett said. “I accept this honor on behalf of the Mongabay team and our network of contributors, who work tirelessly to deliver news and inspiration from nature’s frontline.”
Butler established Mongabay as a U.S. non-profit news organization in 2012 and has since grown the organization to report on environmental issues in ten languages via five international bureaus – India, Peru, Brazil, Indonesia, and the U.S. – which publish the work of staff writers and a network of about 800 freelance reporters in 80 countries. The outlet’s growth continued in 2020, reaching new heights in terms of readership – 10 million monthly readers on average – and influence despite the challenges of COVID, as he noted:
“Despite the pandemic, rising violence against journalists, and other difficulties, Mongabay journalists have done incredible work over the past year, reporting on abuses in commodity supply chains from the Amazon to Indonesia, exploring solutions to some of the world’s biggest challenges, and holding power to account,” said Butler.
This is not his first award but one to add to his list of accolades, ranging from the Field Museum’s Parker Gentry Award to a recent Pongo Award from the Orang Utan Republik Foundation. Mongabay and its many writers regularly win awards as well, including the Latin America bureau’s shared winning of the El Rey/King of Spain Journalism Award (Latin America’s top award for journalism), a Prem Bhatia Award (the most prestigious award for environmental journalism in India) for reporter Sibi Arasu, and most recently a U.S. film festival accolade for the new feature length film, “Our Mother’s Land.”
“I’m extremely grateful to our team as well as the global community of journalists who put their lives on the line on a daily basis to inform and inspire us,” said Butler. “Thank you to the SEAL Journalism Awards for this recognition.”
Other honorees included Fiona Harvey of The Guardian, Alexander C. Kaufman of Huffington Post, Dave Roberts of Volts, and Lisa Friedman of The New York Times, Shannon Osaka of Grist, Zoya Teirstein of Grist, James Temple of The MIT Technology Review, Brian L. Kahn of Earther, Jeff Brady of NPR, Juliet Eilperin of The Washington Post, and Mary Annaise Heglar, Freelance Climate Essayist.
This year’s SEAL Environmental Journalism Awards were chaired by Emily Wasley, Corporate Climate Resilience Practice Leader with WSP USA, a publicly-listed engineering and professional services firm.
“Over the past several years, the field of journalism has been questioned considerably because of the amount of misinformation that exists in our globally interconnected and oftentimes volatile world. Because of this, we rely on trusted journalists for information that is based on sound science and factual evidence,” said Wasley in a statement. “The journalists that have been identified as exemplary to receive a SEAL Award are not shying away from revealing the truth or calling out those that are further exacerbating our climate crisis.”
“Journalism is imperative to help our society understand what is happening behind the curtain and inform them of the subsequent pain and suffering that climate change is having on our frontline communities. We must protect the field of journalism and the right to free, factual speech that is based on sound science to remain informed of the myriad of challenges and opportunities every one of us will experience today and into the future.”
