How Journalism Fights on the Frontline for Nature Conservation

Rhett Ayers Butler describes himself as a lucky child. With collected airline miles from his father’s job and a travel agent for a mother, Butler had seen the wilds of Botswana, Ecuador, and Zimbabwe before he entered high school. 

When he was 17, he crouched in a stream in the Malaysian rainforest of Sabah. Butler was wading through the water when he spotted a lone male orangutan, gliding through the trees above.

Butler savored his experiences in Malaysia, eager to return to the rainforest of Sabah. Several weeks after his trip, he learned that the rainforest was set to be cut down to feed a pulp plant. The animals lost their home.

But his time in Sabah remained vivid in his mind. Butler vowed to create a resource about these precious ecosystems so more people would be informed about their importance. He wanted his resource to be educational, open to everyone, and full of pictures that showed the beauty and wonder he had been lucky enough to see firsthand.

And so the nonprofit Mongabay was born.

Over the next decade, Butler grew the Mongabay website from a passion project to a leading news outlet for all issues at the intersection of people and nature. On a mission to inspire our communities to take action by providing in-depth coverage on topics most people would never have the chance to learn about, Mongabay has won many victories in the fields of conservation, education, and policy change. 

In 2009, Mongabay fought on behalf of Madagascar, using thoughtful, research-focused journalism to uncover the injustice of rosewood deforestation. As a hotspot for biodiversity, 80% of the species on Madagascar are seen nowhere else in the world – including a flower that has been used to cure pediatric leukemia. Despite being a priority for conservationists, a 2009 political crisis meant that the natural resources of Madagascar became vulnerable to trafficking. Illegal loggers began to tear down the rosewood forests, selling the timber to international furniture merchants. Wildlife and local people suffered.

After Mongabay published an investigative report, the European shipping companies responsible for couriering the rosewood committed to stop carrying the timber. Subsequent pressure pushed Madagascar’s transitional government to place a ban on rosewood exports.

Today, Mongabay has multiplied their impact, growing roots in 30 countries, with more than 100 staff members and over 1,000 contributing journalists around the world. 

“A lack of information is one of the major problems we have in actually addressing these issues,” Butler explains. “It is easy to forget that change starts with one person, and it is easier than ever before for someone with an idea to spread it rapidly around the world. And that is the role of good journalism – to give people that spark to work together.”