Rhett Butler

About

Founder of Mongabay.

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1059 stories
Ronald Sanabria. From his Facebook account.

Ronald Sanabria sought to make tourism more sustainable

Rhett Ayers Butler 17 Jul 2026
Sitesh Ranjan Deb at his facility. Image via Agence France-Presse (AFP)

Sitesh Ranjan Deb turned a hunter’s knowledge to saving wildlife

Rhett Ayers Butler 15 Jul 2026
Bill Montevecchi. Photo courtesy of the Pacific Seabirds Group which honored Montevecchi with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2021.

Bill Montevecchi showed what seabirds could tell us about the sea

Rhett Ayers Butler 15 Jul 2026
Gus Mills with a cheetah. Sourced via the Endangered Wildlife Trust

Gus Mills, hyena expert and ‘the cheerful pessimist of the Kalahari’, has died

Rhett Ayers Butler 14 Jul 2026
Kent Carpenter. Image via Old Dominion University

Kent Carpenter spent half a century counting the life of Philippine reefs

Rhett Ayers Butler 14 Jul 2026
Linda Ingham with Pacific white-sided dolphin caught in Japanese driftnet, north Pacific. Photo © Greenpeace / Roger Grace

A marine protected area can ban fishing boats. It cannot stop drifting gear

Rhett Ayers Butler 13 Jul 2026
Lydia Möcklinghoff with a giant anteater. From her social media.

Lydia Möcklinghoff, champion of the giant anteater, has died in a plane crash. She was 45

Rhett Ayers Butler 11 Jul 2026
Maria Laura.

María Laura Tolmos, 37, turned a childhood in the Amazon into her life’s work

Rhett Ayers Butler 6 Jul 2026
Mel Sunquist

Mel Sunquist, field biologist and mentor to generations of conservationists

Rhett Ayers Butler 28 Jun 2026
Researcher pointing to fungi in Yunnan, China. Photo by Rhett Ayers Butler

The case for field stations

Rhett Ayers Butler 23 Jun 2026
Rain over the Amazon. Photo by Rhett Ayers Butler

South America’s farms depend, in part, on a healthy Amazon

Rhett Ayers Butler 22 Jun 2026
Mona Khalil in 2002 at in Tyre. Photo by Jihad Seqlawi/AFP/Getty Images

Mona Khalil, who left safety in Europe to protect sea turtles in Lebanon, was killed by an Israeli airstrike

Rhett Ayers Butler 21 Jun 2026
Drone view of Chiquitano forest recently deforested on the edge of the Bolivian Amazon for soy production. Photo by Rhett A. Butler for Mongabay.

Suriname will not be saved by soybeans (commentary)

Mark J. Plotkin 19 Jun 2026

Monika Silva Koniuszek, 41, defended the everyday things corruption corrodes

Rhett Ayers Butler 18 Jun 2026

How a tiny blue gecko became a conservation comeback story

Rhett Ayers Butler 17 Jun 2026
Peter Klopfer. Photo by Anne Yoder

Peter Klopfer, the scientist whose civil-rights case helped bring lemurs to Duke

Rhett Ayers Butler 16 Jun 2026
Tony Parkes. Photo courtesy of Big Scrub Landcare

Tony Parkes, the banker who replanted a rainforest

Rhett Ayers Butler 14 Jun 2026
Recent fires in the Amazon Rainforest degraded a large portion of the world’s primary forests. Image © Marizilda Cruppe/Greenpeace.

Amazon deforestation alerts fall to lowest 12-month level since 2014, show Brazilian data

Rhett Ayers Butler 14 Jun 2026
Bob Ricklefs. Photo by August Jennewein

Robert Ricklefs, ecologist who helped generations understand nature, has died at 83

Rhett Ayers Butler 13 Jun 2026
RAN Burger King protest in 1987. Image courtesy of Rainforest Action Network

How an activist network built pressure without political power

Rhett Ayers Butler 11 Jun 2026
A recently emerged Suraka silk moth (Antherina suraka) is held by an artisan in the SEPALI Madagascar demonstration garden in Maroantsetra. Trained local farmers use the CPALI method to collect this species’ brown silk, leaving the developing pupae unharmed. Image by Rachel Kramer/CPALI.

How silk caterpillars became a tool for conservation in Madagascar

Rhett Ayers Butler 10 Jun 2026
Soundscape Baselines Site in Baraboo Hills, Wisconsin, USA, includes view of bioacoustic recorder and camera trap

Why conservation urgently needs acoustic baselines

Rhett Ayers Butler 9 Jun 2026
A school of albacore tuna gathered by a seine net, off the Seychelles. Photo by Marc Taquet

Tuna are rebounding. The work is far from done.

Rhett Ayers Butler 8 Jun 2026
Popularly called the “ghost dog” (perro fantasma) in Bolivia, Atelocynus microtis is one of the world’s least-known canid species. Image courtesy of Guido Ayala & María Viscarra/WCS Bolivia.

The ‘ghost dog’ of the Amazon reveals the value of intact forests

Rhett Ayers Butler 5 Jun 2026
Mangrove forest in Indonesia. Photo by Rhett Ayers Butler

How small actions can become planetary forces

Rhett Ayers Butler 4 Jun 2026
Brooklyn Rivera. Photo courtesy of La Prensa,

Brooklyn Rivera, defender of Nicaragua’s Indigenous lands, dies in detention

Rhett Ayers Butler 1 Jun 2026
Thomas Crowther

Nature’s feedback loops can drive collapse. Thomas Crowther thinks they can also drive recovery

Rhett Ayers Butler 1 Jun 2026
Yakama leader Davis Yellowash Washines

Davis “Yellowash” Washines, Yakama elder who spoke for the river and salmon

Rhett Ayers Butler 30 May 2026
Amazon rainforest canopy. Photo by Rhett Ayers Butler

The Amazon’s path from crisis to durability

Rhett Ayers Butler 28 May 2026

Brazil has protected much of the Amazon. It now has to pay for it.

Rhett Ayers Butler 26 May 2026
Aerial view of a cargo ship. Photo by Cameron Venti / Ocean Image Bank

The most underfunded climate opportunities may be at sea

Rhett Ayers Butler 25 May 2026
Emergent tree in the Amazon rainforest. Photo by Rhett Ayers Butler

Will my president save the Amazon? (commentary)

Enrique Ortiz 24 May 2026

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Empty chairs on stage at Sustainable Leather Forum, Paris, September 2026. Image by Elisângela Mendonça
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