Frankly, he gave a damn.
It all began in 1996 when Rhett Butler -- a young Silicon Valley vagabond named for the "Gone with the Wind" rogue -- stopped to cool his feet in a stream in the Malaysian rain forest of Sabah. As he picked leaf leeches from creases in his clothes and listened to the melodic hum of cicadas, he spotted a red-bearded orangutan silently swinging through the branches.
"Though the forest is never silent or still, it brings a deep sense of calm," Butler said, gazing at butterflies in shades of yellow, orange and green fluttering through the lush canopy.
Eight weeks after he left the remote island of Borneo, that calm was shattered when Butler learned that the trees shading that idyllic spot had been logged for wood chips.
Spurred into action, Butler started writing a book about the rain forest that became the foundation for a grassroots Web site he created in 2000. His goal was to gather support for saving the wildlife and wild lands he had grown to love. What he didn't expect was that the trajectory of his career would shift dramatically.
In just three years, Mongabay.com became such a popular encyclopedic resource for teachers, students and others researching the tropical world that it began to make money from clicks on small text advertisements tied to the site's content. Enough money, in fact, that Butler could quit his day job at a small Internet search engine to follow the call of the wild.
Such an adventure never would have been economically feasible were it not for the ever-expanding reach of the Internet and the relative ease and low cost of building an online magazine.
Readers are navigating away from the mainstream and toward a steady flow of specialty publications crafted from a mix of gumption and ingenuity. Wired Magazine editor in chief Chris Anderson calls this new economy the "Long Tail," where a million niches can be found and millions of dollars can be made. For example, Anderson found that 40 percent of sales at online music site Rhapsody are not stocked at Wal-Mart.
Anderson says Butler has found his natural habitat in the long tail.
Butler, a 28-year-old clean-shaven Grizzly Adams, posts tales of his expeditions into remote pockets of wilderness in search of ways to protect endangered species and ecosystems from economic predators.
"He's an example of a niche publisher with an ad-driven model that wouldn't have been possible in the traditional world of advertising," Anderson said.
"This is the nature of the new Web," agreed Internet analyst Rob Enderle. "Folks who can find and maintain an audience and build a site that focuses on compelling content can make a living off of it. Maybe not a great living, but they can certainly make a living."
And make a life, Butler says.
"Some people think it's inherently evil, making money off environmental issues," Butler says. "But the goal is to raise awareness on these issues, promote interest in the world around us and encourage people to go outside and look at things a little bit differently."
His site, so named for an anglicized spelling and pronunciation of an island off Madagascar, Nosy Mangabe, known as a preserve for the Aye-aye, a rare lemur, is a lively and informative travelogue filled with colorful photographs. Mongabay.com typically draws between 800,000 and 1 million unique visitors a month, according to Google analytics.
Companion sites include one geared to kids who want to learn about rain forests and another dedicated to Butler's favorite destination, Madagascar. He plans to roll out a site about Peru this summer.
All of Butler's sites aim to increase appreciation for nature while examining the impact of such global trends as technology, economics and finance on conservation and development.
"I believe education is one of the most critical elements to ensuring that wild lands as we know them today will still be around in 50 years," Butler says. "I think people ... who know about the world around them, are less likely to destroy it without at least pausing for a moment to consider the consequences."
His parents named Butler after the infamous Clark Gable character because his grandfather, the sole survivor of a military plane crash, briefly roomed with the Hollywood actor to help him prepare for his role in "Test Pilot."
Growing up, Butler saw the world as a wild kingdom. Animals of all kinds were drawn to him. He caught lizards and snakes in the Sierra Nevada and snorkeled in search of crabs and other sea creatures in the ocean. As a teenager, he became so fascinated with tropical fish that he wrote a textbook.
Butler inherited his wanderlust from his mom, Nancy, a travel agent who hooked the family on the exotic by booking vacations to such faraway destinations as Africa and the Galapagos. On his first trip on his own in high school, he tagged along with a group of teachers roughing it the Amazon.
Now base camp is his modest Menlo Park apartment where a wall map serves as a global pin cushion, marking all the places he has traveled. In the past year, Butler has tracked gorillas in African rain forests and rehabilitated orangutans in Borneo jungles, survived an elephant charge in the Congo rain forest of Gabon and watched macaws gather by the hundreds to feed on mineral-rich clay deposits in the Amazon forest.
Some of his wilder experiences: getting trapped in underwater vegetation, being chased by wild animals and capsizing in rough seas.
Only on two occasions was he sure he would die, both on the same day in Malaysia.
In the morning, wearing flip flops, Butler trailed a group of monkeys deep into a coastal forest area, failing to realize that the tide levels would soon rise to 20 feet. "At the time I was pretty sure I would be taken by a crocodile, bitten by a poisonous snake, step on a stonefish, get lost or be mauled by some other creature." After an hour of swimming neck deep through the swamp, he finally reached the ocean. "I have never been so happy to reach the beach," he said. "I actually got down on my knees and kissed the sand."
Not easily cowed, in the afternoon, he snorkeled out to an island. At one point in his journey around the island, he had to shinny along the narrow ledge of a sheer cliff. "It didn't seem too bad. Then I was attacked by biting red ants," Butler recalled. "To this day I'm not sure how I managed to hold on."
At last count, Butler's passport had stamps from 24 countries. He even had to add extra pages before his last trip.
In each place, he tries to meet with researchers and environmentalists, natives grappling with conservation efforts and growing development and industry representatives. His goal is to find practical solutions that would allow business and nature to coexist peacefully. And he hopes to fund a conservation project in Indonesia that pays villagers to look after orangutans and nearby rain forest.
He's encouraged by the trend sweeping corporate America to embrace environmental design, use resources efficiently and reduce waste. He hopes these nascent efforts will extend to preserving the rain forests.
"Using our intelligence and ingenuity, the human species can preserve biodiversity and unique places for future generations, without compromising the quality of life for present populations. Anything less reduces our options in the future and leaves the planet a poorer place.
"I believe business can play an important role in the wise use of resources in the future. I dream of the day when conservation is actually profitable."
Favorite place: Madagascar. "Wildlife, people, and landscapes. Even if it didn't have dancing lemurs, absurdly colorful chameleons, and otherworldly tenrecs, I think I would still love it."
Most beautiful place he has visited: The mountainous interior of Venezuela.
Next stop: China, Xinjiang and the Yunnan/Tibet/Sichuan border region.
Other favorite destinations: Colombia, Tanzania and Patagonia.
His Web sites:
Source: Chronicle research