NEWSPAPER STORIES

I’ve been a reporter at the Seattle Times since 1997, specializing in coverage of Indian tribes, nature, and the environment. A few of my favorite stories recently include a this special report on southern resident killer whales and their struggle for survival amid the 6 million people crowding the urban and surburban areas of the Salish Sea, the waters between the US and Canada including Puget Sound.

Some of my other projects at the Seattle Times have included ongoing coverage of the largest dam removal ever anywhere in the world, on the Elwha River in Washington State. We recently updated this story nearly four years after the first dam came down with a spectacular revisit to the river, reporting its resurgence with new life in photos, video, text, and a multimedia presentation that showcases, animal by animal, how the watershed is changing. Have a look!

I also worked with Seattle Times photographer Alan Berner in a  a grueling reporting trip to North Dakota covering the violent arrests by police of demonstrators protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline. Here is the package of stories, photos, and interactive maps we produced. 

More stories on other topics… this story about starfish wasting away from Alaska to Mexico, and the first evidence documented by scientists in the field and the lab of a link with warming ocean temperatures. Sobering. With sea surface temperatures on the rise nearly everywhere on the globe, as one scientist told me, “a warmer world will be a sicker world.”

And this sad one, during Washington’s historic wildfire season in 2015, about ranchers devastated by Washington wildfires. I also dug into a controversy about federal sharp shooters killing cormorants in the Columbia River estuary in an attempt to rebuild failing salmon runs.  I explored the controversy about coal, in a story about Northwest tribes opposed to construction of the biggest coal port ever proposed in North America. And recently I wrote about the rush by the US Forest Service to cut a fire line through critical fish and wildlife habitat to fight a fire that never came anywhere near. If you’d like to browse more stories, here’s my author link at the Seattle Times with an archive of my recent stories.