Rhett Ayers Butler

Rhett Ayers Butler

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About

Rhett Butler is the founder and CEO of Mongabay.

Rhett founded Mongabay out of his passion for wildlife and wild places.

He has traveled widely in the tropics and enjoys photography, hiking, and scuba-diving.

LinkedIn Profile | Personal website | Contact

Some background on Mongabay's origin:

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2116 stories

Conservation depends on rangers. Their wellbeing is often an afterthought

Rhett Ayers Butler 31 Mar 2026
Dracontium_croatii in Emeraldas, Ecuador. Photo by Philipp Hoenle via iNaturalist

Extinction—or just unseen? What Centinela reveals about biodiversity data gaps

Rhett Ayers Butler 30 Mar 2026
Silhouette of a woman standing in a California redwood forest. Photo by Rhett Ayers Butler

A profession built on hope, strained by loss

Rhett Ayers Butler 26 Mar 2026
A Peruvian artisanal fisher poses with a jumbo flying squid. Image courtesy of National Society of Artisanal Fishing of Peru (SONAPESCAL).

The squid rush in the South Pacific is forcing regulators to act

Rhett Ayers Butler 26 Mar 2026
Biruté Mary Galdikas. Photo courtesy of Orangutan Foundation International

Birutė Galdikas, primatologist who spent a lifetime studying & defending orangutans, has died at 79

Rhett Ayers Butler 26 Mar 2026
Elephants in Dzanga Bai in the Central African Republic. Photo by Rhett Ayers Butler.

Plenty of biodiversity data, but too few conservation answers

Rhett Ayers Butler 25 Mar 2026
Sperm Whales Up Close Underwater in Indian Ocean, Western Australia. Photo credit: © Alex Westover

The ocean’s enforcement gap

Rhett Ayers Butler 23 Mar 2026

Captive-bred Panamanian golden frogs released to the wild

Rhett Ayers Butler 20 Mar 2026

Paul Ehrlich, ‘Population Bomb’ ecologist, dies at 93

Rhett Ayers Butler 18 Mar 2026
Frozen tuna are transferred from the Hung Hwa 202, a Taiwanese longliner, to the Hsiang Hao, a Panama-flagged reefer operating out of Tokyo, Japan, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise and crew are investigating distant water fishing fleet practices in the Mid-Atlantic during September and October 2019. Photo credit: © Tommy Trenchard

The hidden cost of fisheries subsidies

Rhett Ayers Butler 17 Mar 2026
Massaha forest. Image by ZB.

How a community defended its ancestral forest from logging

Rhett Ayers Butler 16 Mar 2026
Duck-billed platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) in Scottsdale, Tasmania, Australia. Photo by Charles J. Sharp of Sharp Photography (sharpphotography.co.uk)

Are government subsidies undermining conservation efforts in Australia?

Rhett Ayers Butler 16 Mar 2026

Conservationists are burning out — and some are breaking

Rhett Ayers Butler 12 Mar 2026
Gimlett's reed snake (Calamaria lovii gimletti), rediscovered in Singapore in 2017 after an absence of 84 years. Photo credit: the Law Brothers

Can Singapore rewild its lost reptiles?

Rhett Ayers Butler 10 Mar 2026
David Chivers. Courtesy of Selwyn College

David Chivers, student of the singing apes

Rhett Ayers Butler 9 Mar 2026
Lagoon in Raja Ampat. Photo credit: Rhett A. Butler

Precision conservation: the rise of place-specific strategies where protection works best

Rhett Ayers Butler 9 Mar 2026
Pascale Moehrle. Courtesy of Oceana.

Pascale Moehrle pressed Europe to take its seas seriously

Rhett Ayers Butler 7 Mar 2026
Torres (middle) conducting an interview with architect Marina Tabassum in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in 2025. Image courtesy of Wasif Kabir.

Attention is scarce. Storytelling strategy matters more than ever

Rhett Ayers Butler 4 Mar 2026
Paul Brainerd, President of Aldus, Creator of PageMaker, in 1986. Photo credit: DGHealy

Paul Brainerd turned computers into printing presses and fortune into conservation

Rhett Ayers Butler 4 Mar 2026

No grid, no problem: How Amazon communities built their own power systems

Rhett Ayers Butler 3 Mar 2026
Royal flycatcher (Onychorhynchus coronatus). Photo by Mileniusz Spanowicz / WCS.

Birds are changing — and Indigenous memory is the longest record we have

Rhett Ayers Butler 3 Mar 2026
Yosemite Valley. Photo by Rhett Ayers Butler

America’s national parks face an uncertain future as climate risks mount

Rhett Ayers Butler 2 Mar 2026
Justin Claude Rakotoarisoa, project leader and founding member of Association Mitsinjo. Image by Rivonala Razafison for Mongabay.

Justin Claude Rakotoarisoa, a guardian of Madagascar’s amphibians, has died, aged 45

Rhett Ayers Butler 2 Mar 2026
Abu Dhabi port. Courtesy of the European Space Agency (ESA)

The power of cities over the seas

Rhett Ayers Butler 1 Mar 2026
Story over a Fijian island. Photo by Rhett Ayers Butler

Who actually uses environmental journalism — and why it matters

Rhett Ayers Butler 27 Feb 2026
Rainbow over Borneo. Photo by Rhett Ayers Butler

Letters to the future from journalism’s next generation

Rhett Ayers Butler 26 Feb 2026
Redwoods in Thornewood Open Space Preserve in Woodside, California. Photo by Rhett Ayers Butler

Measuring what works in conservation

Rhett Ayers Butler 24 Feb 2026
Smoke from a fire in Far North Queensland, Australia. Photo by Rhett A. Butler.

After logging bans, Australia turns to “forest thinning”. Does it reduce fire risk?

Rhett Ayers Butler 23 Feb 2026
Jose-Albino-Canas-Ramirez. From Facebook

José Albino Cañas Ramírez, a defender of Indigenous territories, aged 44

Rhett Ayers Butler 20 Feb 2026
Rain over the Amazon. Photo by Rhett Ayers Butler

The Amazon’s most valuable export isn’t timber — it’s rain

Rhett Ayers Butler 19 Feb 2026

Why so many mangrove restoration projects fail

Rhett Ayers Butler 18 Feb 2026
Atoll

Coral bleaching: How warming seas are transforming the world’s reefs

Rhett Ayers Butler 18 Feb 2026

News and Inspiration from Nature's Frontline.

Collage of a cloned jaguar
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Residents use canoes to navigate the floodwaters in Banjar Regency.
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The WeMUNIZE program in Nigeria, significantly disrupted by aid cuts, used digital record keeping and community engagement to increase early childhood immunizations. Image by KC Nwakalor for USAID/Digital Development Communications via Flickr (CC BY 2.0).
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