Skip to the content
Rhett Ayers ButlerRhett Ayers Butler is the Founder and CEO of Mongabay, a non-profit conservation and environmental science news platform. He started Mongabay in 1999 with the mission of raising interest in and appreciation of wild lands and wildlife.
As noted before, shifting Mongabay from a for-profit to a nonprofit granted us the privilege to prioritize impact over chasing clicks. This move freed us to give away our stories and view other media outlets as potential partners rather than competitors. If our articles are republished, that helps us fulfill our mission by helping inform […]
This week the Mongabay Newscast published an interview with me about developments in the Amazon, my recent travels, and what’s upcoming for Mongabay.
A few months ago I was a guest on Dr. Mark Plotkin’s “Plants of the Gods: Hallucinogens, Healing, Culture and Conservation” podcast which explores medicinal plants, Indigenous cultures, and conservation. Plotkin is a conservationist, ethnobotanist, and author who co-founded the Amazon Conservation Team and has won many accolades. I’ve interviewed Plotkin for Mongabay in the […]
An interview with Alejandro Muñoz for Sinc (Ciencia Contada en Español): “No vamos detrás del clic, nuestro periodismo busca mejoras reales en el medioambiente”. A few extracts translated from from the interview: Do you think interest in environmental journalism has increased? Yes. I think the effects of environmental degradation are more evident than ever. This […]
In September I did several talks at the University of Texas at Austin thanks to the Texas Tropical Network. The Texas Tropical Network was inspired by the Bay Area Tropical Forest Network (BATFN), a group I co-founded in 2009 that held about 100 events around the Bay Area over a ten-year period. Texas Tropical Network […]
In October 2023 in an event at Holbrook Palmer Park in Atherton, CA, I spoke about conservation journalism in the world’s most biodiverse places. I talked about my journey of growing Mongabay from a personal passion project into a multinational nonprofit media organization that covers critical issues affecting wildlife, wild places, and communities globally. I […]
Spanish media published multiple stories about Mongabay winning the 2023 Biophilia Award. Here are two examples: La Fundación BBVA galardona a ‘Mongabay’ por crear una plataforma mundial de periodismo ambiental (ABC.es) Rhett Butler, fundador de la web ambiental Mongabay: “La gente prefiere creer lo que encaja con su visión del mundo” (El Mundo)
This week we learned that Mongabay won the BBVA Foundation’s 5th Biophilia Award for Environmental Communication. Mongabay was selected “for its outstanding track record in communicating on nature and biodiversity conservation, especially in the countries of the Global South, thanks to the contributions of over 800 journalists, scientists and other correspondents in more than 80 […]
“How are you responding to challenging trends in the news industry?” To provide background context in answering this frequently asked question, I usually direct people to the Reuters Institute’s Digital News Report and materials from the Pew Research Center. Here are a few key data points from these resources I find particularly relevant: ☑ Decline in […]
Over the past few months, via LinkedIn I’ve shared a series of posts on Mongabay’s 2030 roadmap. Here’s a recap of some of the key points: What is Mongabay? Mongabay is a nonprofit, independent media organization that focuses on issues at the intersection of people and nature. We collaborate with journalists worldwide to highlight stories […]
Working to ensure that environmental journalism is a viable career option that provides a decent and dignified living. Advertising-based media is struggling, resulting in fewer resources for enterprise reporting, such as in-depth investigations. This decline also means fewer paid opportunities for journalists. The challenges are arguably even more acute for journalists who focus on environmental […]
This week, Elon Musk confirmed that the social media platform, X — formerly known as Twitter — plans to stop displaying news article headlines or text within links. Will this decision accelerate the abandonment of the platform by environmentalists? The decline of “Environmental Twitter,” a segment of 380,000 users who frequently discussed climate change and […]
LinkedIn has become our top source for English-language readership via social media. Given the inquiries about social media following my post on audience engagement (https://bit.ly/3rW7QBn), I analyzed the year-to-date social media data for Mongabay’s English-language news website, https://news.mongabay.com. Surprisingly, visitors arriving via LinkedIn links collectively spent 77,070 hours reading our news articles in the first seven […]
“You are the enemy.” “You must stop writing about palm oil.” Such were the words directed at me by a Malaysian palm oil company executive, flanked by two bodyguards, in an elevator in the late 2000s. Though it wasn’t the most menacing incident I’ve encountered in my reporting (e.g. https://bit.ly/44PtpSL), it epitomizes the intimidation journalists regularly […]
How we evaluate the effectiveness of forest conservation is changing. In short, compared to just a few years ago, we possess a much better grasp of what works and what doesn’t. This development is one of the key takeaways from a paper Zuzana Burivalova, Natalie Yoh, H S Sathya Chandra Sagar, Eddie Game, and myself recently published in Current […]
In June, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) announced Monica P. Medina as its new President and CEO. Medina is the first woman to take the helm at WCS and brings with her a wealth of experience from numerous esteemed roles across a variety of institutions, including key leadership positions in three presidential administrations. It’s easy to get […]
What’s the secret to securing funding from foundations? This question, in various forms, has been asked of me a lot since my LinkedIn post about the fundraising component of Mongabay‘s strategic plan (https://bit.ly/3NVeRd2) a few days ago. To be clear, I don’t claim to be an expert in this field. However, I can certainly share insights […]
In recent months, Vice filed for bankruptcy, National Geographic fired its remaining staff writers, BuzzFeed closed its Pulitzer Prize-winning news division, MTV News shut down, The New York Times closed its sports desk, while The LA Times, Insider, and major TV and cable news networks made deep cuts to their newsrooms. In short, advertising-dependent news […]
This post is the third in a series on Mongabay’s recently published 2030 plan. This post focuses on audience engagement. Earlier posts include: Addressing the planetary challenges we collectively face won’t be simple. As a journalism organization, Mongabay plays a crucial role by providing news and inspiration from nature’s frontlines. Our goal is to share […]
This post is the second in a series on Mongabay’s recently published 2030 plan. This post focuses on Mongabay’s editorial agenda. One of Mongabay’s key strengths is our ability to report globally on nature conservation and biodiversity, presenting nuanced stories from a network of local journalists. As a newsroom, we often prioritize the science behind […]
Over the weekend I migrated my photo collection from travel.mongabay.com to pictures.butlernature.com. Mongabay’s growing maturity as an institution is the motivation for this action. The site has evolved from a collection of personal projects to a multinational news organization. Therefore it makes sense to discontinue or migrate some of the projects that are no longer […]
Last week I participated in the Sun Valley Forum. Beyond meeting lots of interesting and inspirational people, I did a fireside chat with the forum’s founder Aimée Christensen on the state of reporting from Nature’s frontline; conducted interviews with author David Ewing Duncan and artist/activist Indrani Pal-Chaudhuri; and moderated the “Mega Deals For Nature” panel […]
Mongabay has experienced significant growth since its establishment in 1999, evolving from a single-person rainforest website into a multinational news organization with hundreds of staff and contributing journalists. We have made tremendous progress, thanks to our newsroom’s ability to produce original journalism that creates tangible impact. However, the magnitude of the global challenges we face […]
A paper authored by Zuzana Buřivalová, Natalie Yoh, H.S. Sathya Chandra Sagar, Edward T. Game, and myself was published today in Current Biology. Titled, Broadening the focus of forest conservation beyond carbon, the paper is a review of recent trends in forest conservation, with a focus on the tropics. Here’s the summary of the paper: […]
Last December, delegates from nearly 200 governments adopted the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework at the United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP15) in Montreal, Canada. This agreement aims to conserve 30 percent of the earth by 2030 – a goal colloquially known as “30×30”. But it’s one thing to set aside areas for conservation and another to […]