Drainage basin may not be the sexiest of ecosystem designations, but watersheds have essential stories to tell. And environment reporters would be wise to view them as regional beats all their own, argues a long-time watershed reporter, who explains why and offers a series of tips to help journalists get the best of the basin beat.
"The Trump administration is expected on Friday to finalize its plan to open about 9 million acres of the pristine woodlands of Alaska’s Tongass National Forest to logging and road construction."
"Mining executive Tom Collier, who boasted in secretly taped conversations that he had leveraged his ties to Republican officials to advance a controversial project in Alaska, resigned Wednesday."
"Wildfires in Washington state have burned hundreds of thousands of acres, including an important mating habitat for sage grouse."
"In secretly recorded meetings, executives with the Pebble Mine project said the operation could run nine times longer than outlined in their permit filings."
"On a cool February morning, around 60 people gathered in the Sierra Nevada foothills to take part in a ceremony that, for many decades, was banned."
"Gravel mines, airstrips, and ice roads could appear in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which Congress never intended when it agreed to allow oil development there, more than a dozen states are claiming in a bid to stop drilling there."
"Along Lake Michigan’s shores, rising waters are eroding Indigenous Odawa burial sites".
"Local tribes and national conservation groups are lobbying to establish a fourth national monument in southern Nevada that would preserve Indigenous cultural sites and critical environmental habitat."
It took teams of journalists to produce an award-winning series of reports digging into environment and climate health effects of massive oil and natural gas production in the Southwestern United States. Our latest Inside Story talks with Jamie Smith Hopkins of the Center for Public Integrity about the benefits of reporting a big story jointly and the project’s sometimes surprising findings.
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