Page 126 • The Revelator

Elephant Ambassador in Chad: A Conversation with Stephanie Vergniault

The founder of SOS Elephants works to save elephants from poachers and other threats.

On her first visit to the Republic of Chad in 1995, Stephanie Vergniault fell in love with the country’s elephants. Plentiful and easy to see at the time, they gave her a sense of freedom and peace.

That was before the elephant poaching crisis began. By 2007, the elephant numbers had plummeted — from 20,000 in the mid-1990s to roughly 4,000 that year. Today only about 1,200 remain in Chad.

“They were no longer visible,” she recalls. “Poaching was decimating the elephants of Central Africa without anybody reacting.”

That’s when she established SOS Elephants, the first organization in Chad dedicated to saving the elephants.

Vergniault, a native of France, set up camp in southwestern Chad where she could monitor the area’s elephants, then numbering about 300. The area has no protected status, which could help provide funding and additional security, so it is a frequent target of poachers — 63 elephants were slaughtered in July/August 2012, another 86 in a single week in March 2013, and 13 more were gunned down in a March 2017 spree, among other incidents.

Yet without her efforts, the situation would likely be worse. In her earnest and quiet way, she has captured attention of Chadian president Idriss Déby Itno about the elephants’ plight. The species’ protection is now a high priority, and the country’s military is active in responding to poaching incidents. She has also built support for elephants in communities, which has led to a network of informants who will provide information on both elephant movements and poachers.

Elephants, too, tend to see the area as a safer haven, as they often flee there to escape poaching elsewhere. About 500 elephants now inhabit the region.

Living on the front lines, Vergniault feels the elephants’ distress and does everything she can with her limited resources. She spoke with me about her experiences and priorities for elephant conservation in Chad.

Neme: Tell me about the most recent poaching incidents?

Vergniault: It started on 22 March in Bousso. Thirteen elephants were killed and ten were wounded by bullets. The government deployed troops but it was too late.

Even though the elephants were found without their tusks, I suspect that the main motive was to get rid of the elephants within this particular area, where human-elephant conflict is very high. Twenty people were killed the past few years by the elephants, and crops were devastated. I suspect some of the local communities to be accomplices with the poachers.

It was very sad because I could not do much. I was just staying nearby the elephants and trying to protect them and push away the communities.

Neme: How is your work viewed in Chad?

Vergniault: At the beginning, the president looked at my work with a certain level of curiosity. Over time, he became more involved and the protection of elephants has become a national priority.

Village people know me and my team and are happy to work with us. They will call our free “green line” to give us information, and we reward them. Over time, we have established a list of people who give us information about the presence of elephants and also about poachers.

But at the same time they would like me to take care of their problem of crops being eaten by the elephants. I ask them to be patient, but they lose patience because of the deteriorating economic situation in the country. [Editor’s note: Chad depends on oil for 70 percent of its income, and plunging oil prices have devastated the country’s economy.]

Neme: What are you doing to change attitudes?

Vergniault: Communities need to feel that you are supporting them and that you understand their situation. Gradually, they become more receptive toward the elephants because we are giving the elephants a lot of attention, and they understand that these elephants can be a potential source of revenue.

One of my favorite programs is the development of beekeeping [to repel elephants and protect crops]. I want to target this activity in the villages that help us protect elephants. Another is an environmental school. So far, at least 500 children have been educated. I think I have given these children a love for elephants, and I hope they continue to fight to save them when I am too old or no longer here.

Neme: What are some of your biggest challenges?

Vergniault: Certain remote villages hesitate to work with us because they are more or less accomplices with the poachers. We try to engage these communities, but it is not simple because they are from semi-nomadic tribes in which hunting is cultural. These villagers are very poor. There is a lack of basic education. They do not send their children to school but send them to keep the cattle in the bush. And the poachers use them as guides to reach the elephants. Last week I went to the bush, a five-hour drive from Ndjamena, with brochures to distribute to them, and promised a big reward to anyone who denounces the poachers.

It remains challenging but we have to engage them. I need to push them to realize how much an elephant alive can benefit their communities.

The situation in Chad is also complicated because of Boko Haram. We were working with a lot of soldiers on anti-poaching, but many were sent to the Lake Chad area to fight against Boko Haram. The last two years, I do not have soldiers to protect my camp. Since November 2016, 30 elephants have been killed in my area.

On top of that, the elephants are destroying farmers’ crops, and because no compensation is given to them, they are more and more hostile to the presence of the elephants.

Neme: What are your hopes for the future?

Vergniault: For more than 10 years I have been calling for the government of Chad to register this area as a protected area. I understand now that I will have to take the lead to make it happen and organize experts to do the feasibility studies and field research.

Lack of resources remains a major challenge. Right now I am using my own money in this battle. I have logistical problems and cannot implement our activities on a larger scale. We also need drones and aircraft to better monitor the area. I need more experts to come and help with anti-poaching, education and eco-tourism training.

Neme: Do you feel you have had an impact?

Vergniault: Some people compare me to Dian Fossey [the famous primatologist who studied mountain gorillas]. I am not sure it is very optimistic because she died alone, killed by a group of poachers.

I am proud that I have influenced the survival of the herds in my area, and that 500 elephants are still here roaming around. It is a success, but it also generates more and more trouble for the farmers. It remains challenging, but I cannot give up.

Related on The Revelator:

The Extinction Crisis is Here. How do We Keep from Feeling Overwhelmed?

Solar Energy Coming Back to Nevada

Citizens of the Silver State may soon be able to go solar once again. A bill going to Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval’s desk next week would restore net metering, which the state’s utility regulators phased out in 2015. Net metering allows households to sell their excess solar energy back to utilities, making solar panels more affordable. Several solar companies stopped adding new Nevada customers after net metering was shut down. Now Tesla and Sunrun say they plan to come back if the bill is signed.

Trump Budget Would Leave Low-Income Families Feeling the Heat

The elimination of the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program could impact millions of people, according to the NAACP.

Low-income families in the United States could be left out in the cold — or in the brutal heat — by President Trump’s proposed 2018 budget.

A little-noticed provision of Trump’s so-called “Taxpayer First Budget” would eliminate funding for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which has assisted millions of families annually with their heating and cooling costs since 1981. The $3.09 billion dollar program provides block grants to states, territories and tribal organizations, which then distribute funding to constituents in need.

Those families already struggle with their heating and cooling bills, which is why the program was created in the first place. According to a report issued earlier this year by the NAACP, low-income and African-American families disproportionately suffer overly high energy burdens. Not only do utility rates take up an overly large portion of expenses for these households, the report details how some utilities routinely shut off service to customers who have trouble keeping up with their bills. Many states offer little to no protection to get those utilities turned back on, even during the dangerous heat of summer or below-freezing winter temperatures.

According to the NAACP:

7 states offer no payment plans to cure delinquency
8 states have no medical protection policies on affecting disconnection of services;
11 states have no disconnection limitation polices
14 states have no date-based protection policies, which set specific dates of when customers cannot, without due diligence, be disconnected from a utility service
28 states have no temperature-based policies — meaning, regardless of how cold it becomes, utilities can be shut-off
11 states have no disconnection limitations
And 36 states have reconnection fees, requiring customers to pay even more to get their service turned back on.

The NAACP calculates that the elimination of the energy assistance program would impact over one million African Americans and nearly 7 million Americans in total. They also estimate that thousands of people a year would face health risks without the program — a number that would only increase in the face of climate change.

“As summertime temperatures increase, and heat waves and droughts become more frequent, people with fewer means are increasingly vulnerable,” says Marcus Franklin, ‎environmental and climate justice program specialist with the NAACP. “Heat is already the number-one weather-related killer in the U.S., triggering asthma attacks, heart attacks and other serious health impacts. The fact that states across the nation do not have seasonal protections in place should be frightening for socially vulnerable communities.”

About half of the program’s current funding goes toward winter heating, but Franklin says he particularly worries about the need for cooling during hot summers. Specifically, the urban heat island effect, which can cause city temperatures to rise as much as 22 degrees above normal, will be hard on low-income city populations. “The hottest parts of the country, including Texas, the Southwest and Florida, have already experienced large increases in extreme heat days, including days over 90, 95 and 100 degrees,” he says. “Extreme heat paired with rising humidity levels make blistering hot days more dangerous.” These areas, which include several of the fastest-growing cities in the country according to the U.S. Census Bureau, are projected to encounter dangerous increases in heat in the coming decades. “Heat-related deaths due to urban extreme heat are common in other regions as well, notably in large cities like Los Angeles and New York. Air conditioning is a luxury many cannot afford.”

Franklin says the release of their report in March, which received surprisingly little media attention, still generated a lot of outrage among the organization’s members and partners. He says one of the most common comments they received about the report “is that it articulates a vision for an energy future that society can strive toward: energy access as a basic right.”

The NAACP’s full report on this issue breaks down existing utility shut-off protections – or lack of them – state by state, while also providing a roadmap for working with utilities and regulators to improve the situation. Franklin says gathering more information and personal stories about utility shut-offs will help to secure a brighter, and safer, future for all customers around the country regardless of the political climate.

Previously in The Revelator:

5 Ways Trump’s Budget Shortchanges Wildlife

John James Audubon Takes Flight in New Graphic Novel

Audubon: On the Wings of the World presents a complex portrait of a visionary scientist and difficult man.

Two rifle shots ring out in the forest. It’s the year 1812 in Louisiana, and naturalist John James Audubon has just bagged himself two elusive birds for his collection: a nesting pair of massive, beautiful ivory-billed woodpeckers.

Upon returning home that evening, Audubon holds his prizes up for his wife to see. “They’ve become such a rarity,” he says to her. “I must paint them quickly before their plumage loses its lustre.”

It’s a sad, melancholy moment. The resulting painting of those two dead woodpeckers — plate 66 in Audubon’s fabled Birds of America — depicts a species that has since disappeared into extinction.

This scene, like many others like it, plays quietly in the new graphic novel, Audubon: On the Wings of the World, by French writer Fabien Grolleau and Belgian artist Jérémie Royer (Nobrow Press, $22.95). The book presents a complex portrait of the iconic 19th century naturalist, showing him as a visionary scientist, a brilliant painter, and a bull-headed eccentric who lived more for his birds than for the people around him.

Audubon, as Grolleau and Royer show us, lived at a time when science had only just started to effectively catalog the world’s species, but also at a time when the wildlife of the world had already begun to disappear, leaving great gaps in their wake. In another scene from the book, the naturalist watches as a flock of a billion passenger pigeons flies overhead, a process that takes three full days before the birds finally stop blotting out the sky. The species went extinct about a century later.

In another resonant scene, Audubon arrives at a Mississippi logging camp. The man in charge tells him over dinner, “If only you’d paid us a visit ten years ago. I would have been able to show you magical, secret areas of the woods. You would’ve discovered bird species that exist only here. If only you know how much I miss these wonders…”

Audubon responds in a curious manner, saying “I believe we’re coming to the end of the age of the great forests, but have we the right to be nostalgic about it? If in their place a great national arises, is the game not worth the candle?”

Still, despite his apparent praise of development and progress, the rapidly disappearing frontier apparently weighed heavily on Audubon. Later in the book Grolleau and Royer depict a moment when the artist — still short of success and his health in ruins — paints frantically, trying to capture the birds of this “Garden of Eden” before the “white man” wiped them all away.

And yet Audubon contributed to some of that himself. He shot the birds that he painted, then posed them to replicate the behavior he witnessed in the wild. “I often say that if I shoot less than 100 birds a day, they must be rare,” he is quoted as saying.

Ultimately, the book celebrates Audubon’s scientific, artistic and (eventually) financial success. His achievement at painting so many North American birds became a sensation and changed the very idea of the way scientific art should display the natural world. Along the way he inspired generations of men and women to follow in his footsteps, to help preserve the natural world that he witnessed starting to disappear more than 200 years ago.

Books such as this can only help to continue that legacy. Grolleau and Royer tell Audubon’s story masterfully. They don’t shy away from his complexities, such as how he abandoned his family for years at a time, or the fact that he killed so many birds to accomplish his research or art, or his less-than-illuminated perceptions of Native Americans and African slaves. But they also bring Audubon’s love of nature to life. Royer’s cartoony art style is significantly simpler than Audubon’s detailed paintings, but the book is filled with delightful and touching details. There’s something quiet and subtle and often magical to enjoy on every page.

The world has changed a lot since Audubon’s day, but the same plight of disappearing habitats and species remains. Maybe we need more obsessed explorers like him. In any case, revisiting his story is a reminder of what we’ve already lost, and what we’re likely to continue to lose without people such as John James Audubon.

Related:

Whooping Cranes Could be Wiped Out by Climate Change

EPA Delays Ozone Pollution Rule for 1 Year

An Obama-era rule to reduce ground-level ozone has been delayed by one year, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt announced Tuesday. The National Ambient Air Quality Standards were supposed to identify cities that currently have ozone levels above 70 parts per billion. The EPA itself calls ground-level ozone “bad ozone” and says it has been linked to numerous environmental and health effects, including “chest pain, coughing, throat irritation, and airway inflammation,” which can lead the asthma or other problems. The announcement about this delay, however, claims the EPA does not “fully understand the role of background ozone levels.”

Solar Power in Nepal: Protecting Wildlife, Empowering Women [Video]

Projects bring energy to ranger stations in Chitwan National Park, plus economic opportunities for nearby women.

Imagine dedicating your life to protecting endangered tigers and rhinos from poachers in the remote forests of a country like Nepal. Not only do you find yourself living hours away from your family for months at a time, you have no way to stay in contact with them. Your ranger station sits nowhere near a power line or other infrastructure, so your mobile phone — your lifeline — becomes useless after just a few days. Meanwhile you spend your nights in the dark, without even electric lights to keep you company.

A new project is helping to solve that problem. Two organizations called Empowered by Light and Empower Generation have installed a solar energy system on top of a remote ranger station in Nepal’s Chitwan National Park, providing the wildlife defenders who live and work there with electricity, light and an ongoing opportunity to stay in touch with their loved ones and professional support staff over their fully charged mobile phones.

The ranger station. Courtesy Empowered by Light and Empower Generation

That’s not all. The two organizations are also helping to train disempowered Nepali women who live near the park to become solar-powered entrepreneurs. The women sell solar lanterns to other women and small businesses in areas that lack reliable access to power, allowing people to continue working after the sun goes down.

The organizations, which are currently expanding their projects, have just released a short film about their work. It illustrates not just the potential solutions of solar power but the challenges in implementing it. The film also illuminates a world of conflict, where humans and wildlife struggle for the same resources — and where the people living around a pristine World Heritage site yearn for energy and development that will improve their lives without hurting the wildlife around them.

Check out the film below, in both 3-minute and 19-minute versions.

6 Hard-Hitting Environmental Podcasts

Fill your ears and feed your mind with some great environmental storytelling.

The Revelator staff loves podcasts. In fact, we plan to launch our own podcast later this year. Until that happens, here are a few of our favorites to keep your ears busy and your heart green.

Terrestrial — The newest podcast on our list, this one comes to you from NPR affiliate KUOW and environmental journalist Ashley Ahearn, who’s tackling some tough topics. The first three episodes to date have covered eco-friendly burial, the fear of environmental doom, and whether or not people want to have kids in a world of climate change. Good stuff.

Threshold — This podcast used its just-finished first season to tell a long-form story about the American bison. Each episode tacked a different piece of the story, ultimately presenting a full picture of the history and future of the bison. Fascinating. Plan to listen to the whole thing on a nice four-hour hike.

Mongabay Newscast — From the venerable environmental news site, every episode of this podcast features some great topics along with pretty incredible guests. They even landed singer-songwriter Paul Simon for a recent episode.

PRI: Living on Earth — Give them an hour a week, they’ll give you the rundown on the most important environmental headlines of the past 7 days. (You can also listen to individual segments in much shorter doses, if that fits your schedule better.)

The Energy Gang — If energy issues are your thing, then this podcast from the experts at Greentech Media is for you. Recent episodes have asked some tough questions about wind power, Tesla’s solar roof and the future of nuclear energy.

Behind the Schemes — This podcast only releases a few episodes a year, but host Rhishja Cota-Larson of the nonprofit Annamiticus always does a great job covering issues related to wildlife trafficking. The most recent entry, released this past February, covered South Africa’s rhino poaching epidemic. Last year’s two episodes on Asian and African pangolins are also must-listens.

What else are you enjoying? Send us your favorite eco-themed podcasts at comments@therevelator.org or post them in the comments below.

Only 2 Sumatran Rhinos Left in Malaysia

One of Malaysia’s last three Sumatran rhinos was euthanized to relieve her suffering from untreatable cancer.

And then there were two.

One of Malaysia’s last three Sumatran rhinos (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis) was euthanized this past weekend to relieve her suffering from untreatable cancer. Puntung, a 25-year-old female, survived a poacher’s trap as a calf, leaving her with just three feet for most of her life. Conservationists captured her from the wild in 2011 and she has spent her time since then living at Tabin Wildlife Reserve.

The Borneo Rhino Alliance estimates that fewer than 100 rhinos from this critically endangered species still exist in all of Indonesia, where their remaining populations cling on in small, fragmented populations.

Why Does It Take So Long to Phase Out Bee-killing Neonic Pesticides?

Home Depot promised to stop selling treated plants last year, but it will take another year before the change takes effect.

Every few days a tall man with bright blue eyes winds his way through the aisles of a Home Depot garden center in Atlanta, Georgia. “Hi, I’m Ron,” reads the front of his orange smock. It’s his job to inspect the store’s shelves to see how quickly its stock of live plants is moving.

Ron Jarvis is the vice president of merchandising and sustainability at Home Depot. It’s also his job to make sure the plants his company sells are safe for people and the environment. But currently some of Home Depot’s plants — mostly fruit trees and shrubs, such as grapes, raspberries and blueberries, which are often plagued by tiny insect pests that eat their leaves — are not safe. They’ve been treated with potent insecticides that are meant to eradicate plant pests but have also been found to kill some of the Earth’s most beneficial bugs: bees.

Home Depot’s plants carry a rather benign-looking tag meant to indicate they’ve been treated with toxic chemicals. “This plant,” the tag reads, “is protected from problematic aphids, white flies, beetles, mealy bugs and other unwanted pests by neonicotinoids.”

What the tag doesn’t discuss is why it’s important. Neonicotinoids, or “neonics,” were introduced by chemists in the 1980s as a less-toxic alternative to chlorpyrifos, another type of insecticide that’s highly poisonous to people and animals. But shortly after neonics were brought onto the mainstream market as an alternative in the 1990s, scientists began accumulating evidence that the chemicals were hurting wildlife. They killed more than just agricultural pests like the aphids and white flies they were intended to target, causing damage to worms, birds, lizards, coastal shellfish, and, most alarmingly, crucial pollinators: bees.

Since the 1990s scientists have only accumulated more evidence of neonic toxicity to the environment. In response Home Depot announced in May 2016 that it would stop selling neonics-treated plants by the end of 2018. Several other home and garden retailers, including Lowe’s, have also set dates to stop selling neonics-treated plants.

But if scientists already know neonics are toxic, why not pull them from shelves now?

“Whenever we hear concerns about a product at Home Depot — be it stakeholders, customers or special-interest groups — we do a lot of research to understand all sides of the story,” says Jarvis. “And that takes time.”

Apparently, it takes a lot of time. Jarvis says he started his investigation of neonics by calling the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2013 to learn more about the possible connections between neonics use and a decline in honeybee health, specifically a phenomenon called “colony collapse disorder,” or “CCD.” CCD, first observed in 2006, is defined as an event where most of the worker bees in a colony disappear from a hive, leaving behind a queen, immature bees and a few nurse bees. The EPA has not defined any causes of colony collapse, but scientists believe there are several potential factors — among them the application of pesticides such as neonics to crops.

After 12 to 18 months of research, Jarvis says he still did not have conclusive evidence that neonics were harming bees. But he says he felt pressure from the public, which had been learning about neonics through the media, to take plants treated with the chemical off his company’s shelves. So while the government could not provide him with any conclusive evidence about widespread bee deaths and neonics, Jarvis moved forward with labeling plants and asking Home Depot growers to stop using the chemicals. At the same time, rather than destroy growers’ existing neonics-treated plants, many of which are put in the ground years before being sold, it appears Jarvis decided Home Depot should sell off its remaining toxic plant stocks to protect growers’ pockets, as well as its own revenues.

“Forcing our growers to destroy their existing neonics-treated plant stocks would cause them great financial hardship,” says Jarvis. “We have contracts with growers that they would not be able to fill should they get rid of the plants they’ve already put in the ground…and those plants are worth money.”

He adds that Home Depot’s move to remove neonics-treated plants from its shelves is a demonstration of the company’s commitment to staying “ahead of the curve.” Despite their danger to honeybees and other animals, neonics are still approved for use by the U.S. government, which acknowledges they impact bees, yet only mandates warning labels on packaging.

The government’s position doesn’t match up with independent scientists’ peer-reviewed research, which reveals that neonics are a major threat. “Neonicotinoids influence bees’ nervous systems,” says Maj Rundlöf, a biologist at Lund University in Sweden and lead author of a well-known neonics study published in the journal Nature in 2015. She and a group of Swedish researchers allowed various groups of wild bees to forage for pollen and nectar on rapeseed (canola) oil plants in 16 fields. Some fields were treated with a neonic pesticide called clothianidin and a fungicide, while others were treated with fungicide only. The researchers found that the presence of clothianidin reduced the number of bees found in a given field, decreased nesting of solitary bees, harmed honeybees’ growth and reproduction, and diminished “honeybee colony strength,” as defined by the number of adult bees present.

The chemical doesn’t necessarily cause instant death for bees, Rundlöf says. “If the exposure doesn’t kill them, it influences their ability to navigate, forage, care for their brood and fight disease. Bees are used to eating very nontoxic food, pollen and nectar, and therefore have little adaption to detoxification, which make them particularly sensitive.”

While the EPA hasn’t come forward with a conclusive answer, many independent scientists and conservation groups continue to push for an end of neonics use, for the sake of the bees.

“Home Depot’s promise to remove neonicotinoid-treated plants from its stores is a step in the right direction,” the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation told The Revelator in a statement. “This action will help limit bee exposures to harmful chemicals and send a valuable message regarding the need to reconsider how we manage pests. But as the retailer notes, its promise is only part of the solution. The shift away from chemical-intensive pest management can be made by everyone from backyard gardeners to large farms.”

Hopefully other retailers will take notice of Home Depot’s moves to help take toxic plants off its shelves. More retailers and more growers moving away from neonics might help spark a movement to ban the toxic chemicals nationally, as has been proposed in the European Union, for the sake of the bees — and the plants and people that depend on them.

“The Need for Environmental Journalism Is More Acute Now Than Ever”

The Revelator speaks with Bobby Magill, president of the Society of Environmental Journalists.

What is the role of environmental journalism in a world of science denialism, partisan politics, “fake news” and ever-increasing environmental threats? I gave Bobby Magill, the president of the Society of Environmental Journalists and senior science writer at Climate Central, a call to discuss the nature of covering these tough issues during these difficult times.

A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.

John Platt: I’m really interested, as SEJ president and someone with a lot of experience in the field yourself, what you feel the role in environmental journalism is these days, and if you think it’s changing as a result of the political climate?

Bobby Magill: Well, I think clearly the role of environmental journalism is to inform the public about their environment, the regulations that affect their environment, the air they breathe, the public lands they enjoy, the quality of their water, their changing climate. Without journalists and environmental journalism, the public would have a very difficult time trying to parse out the facts versus misinformation regarding the environment in which they live. So, environmental journalism plays a critical role in public understanding of that, and the political process.

Platt: So one of the things that I like about environmental journalism is that it combines so many topics. It’s got science and politics. It’s got crime, lifestyle choices, just about everything under the sun. In your vision, is this kind of like a field that enwraps everything else?

Magill: I like to think about it this way. Maybe not every story, but many stories that we write as journalists can have an environmental angle.

You know, the SEJ board just held its board meeting in Fort Collins, Colorado, and Colorado State University recently built a new stadium right on campus. That required land use change on campus, and that had a variety of issues associated with it. That’s an environmental story because it affects land use. It affects traffic patterns. It affects how people use electricity and water, and how they park their car, it affects transportation and all kinds of things that have environmental consequences. So, that’s a sports story. It’s a business story. It’s an education story, and it’s an environmental story.

Platt: Changing focus, have things gotten harder for environmental journalists over the past few years? Obviously, the EPA was not even all that talkative to journalists, even under President Obama. Now we have President Trump and all that that entails.

Magill: Right. You asked earlier how the role of environmental journalism has changed. It’s all a similar issue. I don’t think that the very basics of how we conduct environmental journalism needs to change under this regulatory environment we now are faced with. Our tactics to get information might need to change, but the need for environmental journalism is more acute now than ever. As journalists we need to be more vigilant in sort of penetrating the veil of government information or lack thereof, and it makes the role of environmental journalists and our job that much more urgent.

The nuts and bolts of how we conduct our jobs change a bit because, you know, we may end up having to file more Freedom of Information Act requests. We do have to go around official sources more often than we used to, and be more creative in how we get good information and verify that information.

“Without journalists and environmental journalism, the public would have a very difficult time trying to parse out the facts versus misinformation regarding the environment in which they live.”

Platt: What do you think the next big challenges are for environmental coverage? Is it breaking through the misinformation, or are there areas you think the field should be focusing on?

Magill: Well, it’s several things. I think one of the biggest challenges that we as journalists don’t acknowledge enough is that we have to sell the idea that the environment needs to be covered to our editors. I had a conversation just this last weekend with a reporter at a traditional newspaper who is struggling a bit to get environmental coverage recognized by her editors, because some environmental stories don’t necessarily get the clicks. They don’t get the engagement that more sensational stories do. And as an organization, we have to convince our editors or information gatekeepers that the environment is worth covering.

We also have to be more creative in how we write our stories, and how we write our headlines so that these issues can rise to the top of our coverage, and of the public’s attention.

Platt: And that’s interesting because you and I are in almost the opposite place. You write for Climate Central, so it’s a dedicated publication. I’m working for a dedicated environmental site. Does that present challenges for getting the story further, aside from our niche readership?

Magill: Well, I think it depends on the publication. Climate Central is a unique organization. You know, it might be a challenge sometimes for readers to come to our website, but we syndicate our stories to other outlets, so one of my stories that appears at Climate Central might appear in Scientific American or Salon, or some of these other publications, which have an audience that’s built in that’s a bit larger. But your publication and others could do drastically different.

You know, within our niche, we still have to make effective pitches for certain kinds of coverage, and that’s something that is going to continue to change. It’s going to continue to be possibly more of a challenge, and it’s something that many of us probably in journalism need to become better at as the media landscape changes.

Platt: And is that changing landscape the continuing weakening of local media?

Magill: Yes. It is. In fact, you could take any region that’s been dominated by a single newspaper or a single media outlet over time, and look at its declining readership and business model. It would certainly present a challenge for environmental coverage. And it’s much, much more difficult for reporters working in those newsrooms to try to get environmental coverage to rise above or to be prioritized, and that’s a challenge that we’re going to continue to have.

While some mainstream news outlets may be declining in their readership, we also have others growing or adapting. Just a couple of days ago, The Times-Picayune and The New York Times created a partnership to study the coastal effects of climate change along the Louisiana coast, and SEJ played a role in that. And these are partnerships that, hopefully, will not only strengthen national media, but if there are more of these partnerships, they will strengthen local media, as well.

So I think the media in general are going to have to be — and are actually being — quite creative to try to strengthen local coverage of environmental topics, particularly, climate change.

Platt: A couple of months back someone asked me, how do I try to inspire my readers to action? That’s an interesting question because sometimes I just want people to know the information and make up their own minds and see if they want to take their own action. Do you think we’re in a position where we should be pushing people directly to say, this is what you should do, or this is what you could do?

Magill: Well, it’s an interesting question — and there are journalists who bristle at it. But here’s the thing, you know, we have Investigative Reporters and Editors, which is an organization that, by its very name, the mission is this righteous indignation against corruption and that sort of thing. And you know, these are straight-up journalists, right, who have taken it as their professional mission in life to essentially call out corruption, and in so doing, they’re inspiring their readers. They’re issuing a call to action to their readers through journalism, I’d imagine, to vote out corrupt politicians and stop corruption in whatever way they can, to speak out about corruption at least.

I don’t necessarily know that there’s any sort of consensus to whether, you know, the environment or environmental reporters have the same mission, or should have the same mission, but it certainly is a question. If we accept that part of journalism’s mission is to call out corrupt government and to encourage open government, it’s not that much of a leap to jump to the idea that we as journalists might also want to use that principle and apply it to environmental issues, specifically clean air, clean water, and just simply the fact of climate change. And it is a question that we will grapple with as we’re dealing with questionable public information about climate change and the legitimacy of science.

Platt: Are there any particular stories that you think people should be paying attention to over the next few months?

Magill: Well, one that I think is incredibly important is the federal budget. If any of Trump’s budget cuts come to pass, it has an effect on climate science or federally funded climate science, and federally conducted climate science and environmental enforcement. So it has this very long ripple effect, and it’s something that people should be paying very, very close attention to, particularly the details of which programs are affected.

Platt: That’s great, Bobby. Thanks.

Magill: Thank you.