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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2313 stories
Waved albatross (Phoebastria irrorata). Photo by Rhett Ayers Butler

Half of seabirds are declining. Protecting marine flyways could help save them

Rhett Ayers Butler 10 Apr 2026
A federal fisheries observer sorts fish and collects data to inform fisheries management aboard the Cassandra Anne, a groundfish trawler based in Oregon, U.S. Imge by Chris Peterson/Action Works Photography courtesy of Oregon Sea Grant via Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).

How the US rebuilt a collapsed fishery

Rhett Ayers Butler 9 Apr 2026

Tracking environmental crime in the Amazon: A conversation with Alexa Vélez

Rhett Ayers Butler 9 Apr 2026
Scarlet macaw in Costa Rica. Frugivores are important seed dispersers. Photo by Rhett Ayers Butler

How quickly do tropical forests recover? Faster than expected, but slower than it seems

Rhett Ayers Butler 8 Apr 2026
Silverback gorilla in Dzanga-Sangha, Central African Republic. Photo by Rhett Ayers Butler

Why conservation needs stories of progress

Rhett Ayers Butler 7 Apr 2026
Azurina eupalama, last documented evidence of its existence, photographed in 1983 by Jack Stein Grove at Sullivan Bay, Santiago Island, Galapagos Archipelago

Is the Galápagos damselfish extinct?

Rhett Ayers Butler 7 Apr 2026
Mitchell Byrd. Photo by Linda Richardson

Mitchell Byrd, ornithologist who helped bring bald eagles back from the brink in the Chesapeake area

Rhett Ayers Butler 6 Apr 2026
Jane Goodall planting a tree. Photo courtesy of the Jane Goodall Institute.

Today is Jane Goodall Day. Her movement continues.

Rhett Ayers Butler 3 Apr 2026
Remote river in the Peruvian Amazon. © Zoom.Earth

How underinvesting in information threatens our collective well-being

Rhett Ayers Butler 2 Apr 2026
Agroforestry in Ethiopia. Image by Trees ForTheFuture via Flickr (CC BY 2.0).

Who gives up land for the world’s climate fixes?

Rhett Ayers Butler 1 Apr 2026
Cymodocea nodosa seagrass in Spain, also known as Little Neptune grass. Restoring and protecting seagrass can have climate and coastal protection benefits. Image courtesy of Liam McGuire/Ocean Image Bank.

The underwater meadows that help keep beaches from disappearing

Rhett Ayers Butler 31 Mar 2026

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

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