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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2275 stories
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
Pat Lowe.

Pat Lowe spent decades describing and defending the Kimberley

Rhett Ayers Butler 28 Jul 2026
Father Robert Athickal

Father Robert Athickal asked children to protect the living world

Rhett Ayers Butler 27 Jul 2026
Khuiusi Khisetje. Photo by Christian Braga / ISA

Khuiusi Khisêtjê helped his people recover their land and future in the Xingu

Rhett Ayers Butler 24 Jul 2026
Cerros de Mavecure in Colombia's Guainía in July 2026. Photo by Rhett Ayers Butler / Mongabay

Ten years of Mongabay Latam

Rhett Ayers Butler 23 Jul 2026
John H. Rappole. Photo courtesy of the Post Journal

Smithsonian ornithologist John Rappole reconsidered why birds migrate

Rhett Ayers Butler 22 Jul 2026
Renato Moraes de Jesus. Photo courtesy of the Conselho Regional de Engenharia e Agronomia do Espírito Santo (Crea-ES)

Renato Moraes de Jesus was a pioneer of Atlantic Forest restoration in Brazil

Rhett Ayers Butler 21 Jul 2026
Florida Manatee. Photo credit: Robert Bonde / USGS

America’s retreat from wildlife protection will be felt far beyond its borders

Rhett Ayers Butler 20 Jul 2026
Félix Guillermo Moncada Gavilán

Félix Guillermo Moncada Gavilán helped move Cuba from sea turtle fishing to protection

Rhett Ayers Butler 20 Jul 2026
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
Mohammed Abu Daya, right, collects data on a spinetail devil ray that fishers brought to shore in Gaza in 2015. Image courtesy of Mohammed Abu Daya and Giuseppe Notarbartolo di Sciara.

The Gaza scientist still tracking manta rays from a war zone

Rhett Ayers Butler 7 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
A bonobo observes its surroundings from the canopy in Salonga National Park. Earning the trust of wild bonobos is a painstaking process that begins before dawn and can take years to achieve. Photo by Alice Péretié / Chengeta Wildlife.

Before tourists can see bonobos, trackers must earn their trust

Rhett Ayers Butler 23 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
The remnants of Upper Guinean Tropical Rainforest within Sierra Leone are home to a multitude of species, many of them threatened, such as the white-necked rockfowl (Picathartes gymnocephalus). Image by Charles J. Sharp via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

A few seconds with one of West Africa’s rarest birds

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

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
The Eighty Mile Beach is a nesting site for the flatback turtle.

Australia establishes the first Sea Country Indigenous Protected Area

Rhett Ayers Butler 15 Jun 2026
Tony Parkes. Photo courtesy of Big Scrub Landcare

Tony Parkes, the banker who replanted a rainforest

Rhett Ayers Butler 14 Jun 2026

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A collage featuring Ashoka Mukpo, a Mongabay reporter, and a cocoa bean
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A young cacao tree in Grand Gedeh, Liberia. Photo by Ashoka Mukpo for Mongabay.
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