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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2303 stories
Michael Painter in the Brazilian Amazon. Photo by David Wilkie.

Michael Painter put Indigenous land rights at the center of conservation

Rhett Ayers Butler 2 Sep 2026
Kerexu Laudiceia smoking a petyngua, the Guarani people’s sacred pipe. Image by Fellipe Abreu.

Tiago Karaí and Laudiceia Benites helped reclaim Guarani land. They died with their children in an accident last month.

Rhett Ayers Butler 1 Sep 2026
With Dreyk, a member of the Cubeo people from the Venado community, surrounded by the Mavicure Hills in Guainía, Colombia. Credit: Rhett Ayers Butler

Environmental crimes don’t stop at borders. Neither can the reporting

Rhett Ayers Butler 31 Aug 2026
A view of the presidential palace in Indonesia's new capital, Nusantara. Image courtesy of Leah Varjacques.

Recording a rainforest before Indonesia’s new capital changes it

Rhett Ayers Butler 31 Aug 2026

For 50 years, Philip Fearnside has calculated the costs of losing the Amazon

Rhett Ayers Butler 31 Aug 2026
Hà Đình Đức with the great softshell of Hồ Gươm. Photo by ZNews Vietnam

Hà Đình Đức, guardian of Hanoi’s legendary turtle, died at 86

Rhett Ayers Butler 28 Aug 2026
Américo Pascuala Tumisha. Photo courtesy of Rainforest Foundation Norway (RFN)

Ashéninka leader reportedly killed while patrolling Indigenous territory is found alive

Rhett Ayers Butler 26 Aug 2026

Daniel Janzen and the long work of bringing back a forest

Rhett Ayers Butler 24 Aug 2026
Patricio Segura. Courtesy of Patagon Journal

Patricio Segura, journalist who defended Patagonia’s rivers, died of hantavirus, aged 54

Rhett Ayers Butler 23 Aug 2026
Pete Brosius in Sarawak

Pete Brosius brought Penan forest stewardship in Sarawak into court

Rhett Ayers Butler 22 Aug 2026

Why every endangered species needs a champion: a conversation with conservationist Bill Konstant

Rhett Ayers Butler 20 Aug 2026
A Timor green pigeon (Treron psittaceus).

Only a few hundred Timor green pigeons may remain. There is still time to save them

Rhett Ayers Butler 17 Aug 2026
Steve Smit. From his Facebook page

Steve Smit, South Africa’s “Monkey Man,” has died

Rhett Ayers Butler 15 Aug 2026
John Salehe. Photo courtesy of AWF

John Salehe helped shape Tanzania’s community conservation movement

Rhett Ayers Butler 15 Aug 2026
Cerros de Mavicure at sunset. Photo by Rhett Ayers Butler.

Among the sacred hills of Colombia’s Guainía

Rhett Ayers Butler 14 Aug 2026
Adam Falk at Jahoo Gibbon Camp within Keo Seima Sanctuary in Cambodia. Photo courtesy of WCS.

What conservation looks like from the outside: A conversation with Adam Falk after his first year as CEO of WCS

Rhett Ayers Butler 11 Aug 2026
Chimpanzees at Tacugama

What makes chimpanzee conservation last? Lessons from Sierra Leone

Rhett Ayers Butler 11 Aug 2026
A group of cow elk traverses an active mine site as they move between forest patches. Image courtesy of Brittany L. Slabach.

Wildlife in the eastern US are making a comeback

Rhett Ayers Butler 10 Aug 2026
Mariano Cenamo. Photo by Renato Stockler / Folha Press

Mariano Cenamo, advocate for a sustainable Amazon bioeconomy, has died, aged 46

Rhett Ayers Butler 10 Aug 2026
Mist rising from the Amazon rainforest in July 2026. Photo by Rhett Ayers Butler / Mongabay

Amazon deforestation alerts fall to lowest level since 2013, Brazilian data show

Rhett Ayers Butler 9 Aug 2026

Tree cover is not the same as ecological recovery

Rhett Ayers Butler 7 Aug 2026
Vinod Rishi

Vinod Rishi helped give India’s elephants room to roam

Rhett Ayers Butler 6 Aug 2026
The Alta Floresta titi monkey is the symbol of Alta Floresta bridges program. Image courtesy of Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute and Projeto Reconecta.

Amazon canopy bridges enable 15,000 wildlife crossings without a single roadkill

Rhett Ayers Butler 5 Aug 2026
Doña Oscarina. Photo by Ana Amelia Hamdan / ISA

Doña Oscarina, master ceramicist, documented Indigenous knowledge along the Tiquié River

Rhett Ayers Butler 4 Aug 2026
A whitetip reef shark (Triaenodon obesus) stalks the reef at Luf Island, Papua New Guinea.

Four Pacific nations are planning one of the world’s largest ocean corridors

Rhett Ayers Butler 4 Aug 2026
A local community takes part in a tree plantation project in 2018.

Bangladesh plans to plant 250 million trees. Keeping them alive will be harder

Rhett Ayers Butler 3 Aug 2026

PUMA FEST and the community Mongabay Latam has helped build

Rhett Ayers Butler 3 Aug 2026
David Page wrote about the mountains and worked to protect them

David Page wrote about the mountains and worked to protect them

Rhett Ayers Butler 1 Aug 2026
Most tourists who travel to the Central African Republic (CAR) are drawn by the western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) in Dzanga-Sangha National Park. Image by Rhett A. Butler/ Mongabay.

Central African Republic’s Dzanga-Sangha tests the promise of wildlife tourism

Rhett Ayers Butler 31 Jul 2026
Dave Johnson. Photo from the Global Owl Project

David Johnson, the owl man of Umatilla

Rhett Ayers Butler 30 Jul 2026
Bill Oddie launches the Visit Scotland new website with Tam the Peregrine falcon at Visitscotland’s London office, May 6, 2004. Photo by Michael Stephens/PA via AP.

Bill Oddie brought birdwatching into millions of homes

Rhett Ayers Butler 29 Jul 2026
Overhead view of the Rio Huaypetue gold mine in the Peruvian Amazon. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.

Mining, drilling, and fire are fragmenting the world’s largest forests

Rhett Ayers Butler 28 Jul 2026

News and Inspiration from Nature's Frontline.

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Pallas’s cat kittens in Mongolia. These small cats are vulnerable to declines in other burrowing species, as they can’t dig out holes for themselves that they use for shelter and to raise their young. Image by Sebastian Kennerknecht/Cat Expeditions
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San Mateo village, one of 29 Matsés communities in Peru, on the banks of the Gálvez River. Image by Aimee Gabay/Mongabay.
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