Scripps Fellows Updates

Lisa Busch in March received the environment award in the Volvo for Life competition for her work to mend rifts between environmentalists and former pulp mill workers in Sitka, Alaska. She credits her reporting skills for her success in starting Sitka Trail Works, an organization that gives former mill workers new jobs on trail building crews. She’s now president of the organization, which has built over $2 million worth of trails. Details of her work are published online at:
http://www.volvoforlifeawards.com/cgi-bin/iowa/english/heros/hero2004/5380.html.

Carie Call, who lives on Pine Island off Florida’s central west coast, has taken a position as an environmental planner with the Lee County Department of Environmental Sciences. After 20 years in journalism, she says, “I wanted to do more to help instead of just writing about other people helping, and telling other people what they should be doing.” She and her husband, Barry, are still wrangling with banks and insurance companies to get funds to repair the extensive damage to their home sustained during Florida’s brutal 2004 hurricane season. The island was battered by four separate storms. They’ve made progress with helping to restore some of the island’s lush flora, however, taking advantage of fine spring weather to plant lavender, geraniums, passion flowers, and mango, avocado, bottle brush and live oak trees. Contact Carie at cobenchain@comcast.net.

John Flesher just had an article published in a Michigan regional magazine on the theme of environment and religion, a subject he pursued during his fellowship year. Last fall he also wrote a series of articles for the Associated Press on water use in the Great Lakes region, including whether Great Lakes water could ever be diverted to the West.

Dan Grossman won the Media Award of the American Institute of Biological Sciences and first prize in the in-depth radio reporting category in the Society of Environmental Journalist’s Annual Awards for Reporting on the Environment competition. Both awards were for “The Penguin Barometer,” a Radio Netherlands documentary on the impact of climate change on ecosystems. Also check out his most recent endeavor, a multi-media website on people and nature in Madagascar, at www.wbur.org/special/madagascar.

Todd Hartman and Rocky Mountain News colleague Jerd Smith published a 5-part series called "The Last Drop," which detailed the damage Colorado's thirsty Front Range is causing to mountain streams on the Western Slope. The project won a first place award from the American Planning Association and was co-winner of the Wirth Chair in Environmental and Community Development Policy award in the print media category.

John Kotlowski has turned his camera towards the National Parks, seeking to document Americans' relationship with their parks. He writes: “I am looking for the people in these photographs, or signs of them—the parking lots, the cars, the trash, the cameras, the crowds, the umbrellas, and so on." In recent months, his project has taken him to Arches National Park, Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, and the Great Smoky Mountains. John is also working on a project in Poland, where he is using photography, film and video to document traditional farming villages and the residents' way of life, which persists against the backdrop of corporate farming.