Rhett A. Butler, Mongabay founder and CEO, has been named to the 2025 Forbes Sustainability Leaders List, which honors 50 global leaders working to combat the climate crisis. “Mongabay has tended to fly under the radar. We’ve focused on the journalism rather than promoting ourselves, so this recognition is especially meaningful — and it reflects the contributions of everyone involved,” Bulter said. The recognition is a milestone in a journey that goes back some 25 years to when Butler was a teenager visiting a rainforest in Borneo. “I vividly remember cooling my feet beside a jungle creek when a wild orangutan emerged in the canopy overhead. We made eye contact — just for a few seconds — but the moment stayed with me,” he told Forbes. He later learned that the forest where he had that profound experience was to be destroyed for pulp and paper. That devastating news sparked in him a lifelong commitment to conservation; he eventually quit his tech job in Silicon Valley and started Mongabay out of his California apartment. “My parents weren’t thrilled about the idea,” he recalled. “I was often asked when I’d get a ‘real job.’ It took several years — and external recognition — for them to see that Mongabay could be a ‘real job.’” Today, Mongabay is a global newsroom with roughly 1,000 contributors across more than 80 countries, producing podcasts, videos and articles in seven languages from bureaus in Latin America, India, Africa and Brazil. Hundreds of local media outlets…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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