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.

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Some background on Mongabay's origin:

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2256 stories
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
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 Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) in India. Image by Charles J. Sharp via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Cambodia wants its tigers back. So it plans to import Bengal tigers from India

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
This platypus is ready for release, after being captured, weighed, measured and given a health assessment.

What the platypus can teach us about smarter conservation

Rhett Ayers Butler 8 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
A European wildcat in Scotland, where 46 captive-bred wildcats have been released as part of an ongoing reintroduction project. The cats are repopulating former habitat in the Cairngorms mountain range in the eastern highlands.

The European wildcat is back. In some places.

Rhett Ayers Butler 3 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
One of many unattributed AI-generated images doing the rounds on social media.

The new burden of proving wildlife is real

Rhett Ayers Butler 29 May 2026
Amazon rainforest canopy. Photo by Rhett Ayers Butler

The Amazon’s path from crisis to durability

Rhett Ayers Butler 28 May 2026
A leopard cat in India’s West Bengal state. India’s population of leopard cats is not contiguous, with individuals in the western part of the country isolated from the rest of the leopard cat’s range. Image by Soumyajit Nandy via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Asia’s overlooked leopard cat

Rhett Ayers Butler 26 May 2026

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

Rhett Ayers Butler 26 May 2026
The plight of koalas was a factor in creating this new national park, but 66 threatened animals and 37 threatened flora species are also found here.

Great Koala National Park tests whether protected forests can stay connected

Rhett Ayers Butler 25 May 2026

News and Inspiration from Nature's Frontline.

Collage, Fritz Pinnow, contributor, and a soldier
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Seagrass meadows, pictured above, play a critical role in carbon sequestration and protecting coastlines.
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The first wildlife bridge in Brazil is connecting habitat across the coastal four-lane BR-101 highway.
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