Rhett Ayers Butler
Last Thursday I gave the keynote address at the Pacific Forest Trust’s Forest Fete gala. I spoke about four lessons I’ve learned over 27 years at Mongabay on how to reach and engage audiences: Identifying your audience (who you’re actually trying to reach) Framing (how the issue is presented) Narrative (what makes people stay and [Continue reading]
Conservation has never lacked alarming facts. What it increasingly lacks is attention. After years of grim headlines, many people do not just feel sad. They disengage. They stop reading, stop donating, and in some cases stop believing that anything meaningful can still be done. That reality is no longer a side issue for the movement. [Continue reading]
Presented on October 22, 2025 in Pittsburgh, PA at the Heinz Awards ceremony. Good evening. We gather tonight in the spirit of Senator John Heinz — a leader who believed that civic engagement, evidence, and empathy could help society solve even its toughest problems. The Heinz Awards remind us that progress begins when people turn [Continue reading]
Last week at a Climate Week event organized by Sentient Media, I was asked to share an example of Mongabay’s reporting on an animal welfare issue. I spoke about an investigation into cattle ranching. The background: Cattle ranching is the single largest direct driver of deforestation in the tropics, responsible for 70–80% of forest clearing [Continue reading]
You can’t fact someone into caring. Facts inform, but stories move. That idea came up often last week during discussions at The Villars Institute. The science is clear: our planetary systems are under immense stress. Yet, we’ve failed—dramatically—to communicate that reality in ways that resonate with most people. The challenge is compounded by the worsening [Continue reading]
Sustainability officers are now an endangered species. This week, I spoke with a group of sustainability officers navigating a corporate landscape where terms like CSR, ESG, and climate change have become politically charged. Many companies are pulling back from public commitments on sustainability—not necessarily because the urgency has diminished, but because the risk of political [Continue reading]
Make deforestation newsworthy. That’s a core principle behind much of the work we do at Mongabay. We’re not as eye-catching as a Greenpeace protest, like that pictured above, but we persistently report on it. I highlighted this as one of our key strategies during a talk on Friday at the 31st Annual Conference of the [Continue reading]
Jane Goodall had some nice things to say about Mongabay’s work during a conversation with Climate One’s Greg Dalton and myself in San Francisco on September 16th. I tell everybody, if you really want to know the truth about a particular issue, go to Mongabay.” “We know we’re going through dark places on the planet [Continue reading]
At last night’s Climate One event, nearly 1,700 attendees, including more than 600 students and educators, gathered to hear Jane Goodall deliver a heartfelt plea for the future of our planet. In a conversation moderated by Greg Dalton, Goodall’s words pierced through the often numbing barrage of crises that dominate our daily news. “Please vote,” [Continue reading]
Last week I attended the Villars Symposium as a speaker. My talks: How Digital Engagement Enables Systems Change According to the Pew Research Center, 97% of teens in the United States use the internet daily but no data is available as to whether this helps them learn independently or informs their decision making about how [Continue reading]
Earlier this week I joined a panel on climate journalism organized by Climatebase for their fellowship program. One of the questions I was asked was, “What kind of coverage or content do you think is missing in climate media?“ I mentioned the importance of telling stories that resonate with target audiences. Preaching to the choir [Continue reading]
Earlier this month, I joined science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson for a conversation about conveying climate change and other environmental issues to the public. The virtual event took place at the University of California-San Diego’s Triton Leaders Conference 2024 and was emceed by Michael Bumbry. We discussed communicating environmental issues via news reporting and [Continue reading]
On Monday night I gave a lecture at the prize ceremony for the BBVA Foundation’s 5th Biophilia Award for Environmental Communication (English) (program). The event was held in Madrid. I was asked to speak about “Reasons for hope in the face of the global environmental crisis” and provide a text of my remarks ahead of [Continue reading]
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 [Continue reading]
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 [Continue reading]