thank you, sej/fej!

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Three’s a charm. I’d applied for reporting funds from the Society of Environmental Journalists’ Fund for Environmental Journalism before, to no avail. But take note, you other scrappy journalists out there, you must persevere! I did, and now I am thrilled and thankful to learn that my application this summer, which will help support my new book project, Elemental India: Dispatches from the Global Environmental Front, was funded. The indispensable support will help me begin reporting in North India this fall. Thank you. Shukriya!

Here’s the announcement of all the grant recipients…

Fund for Environmental Journalism Announces Summer 2012 Grantees.

Thanks to generous funding from the Cornelius King Foundation and the Heinz Endowments, plus numerous small gifts from members and friends of the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ), we are pleased to announce that the organization is awarding a total of $12,105 to five journalism projects selected in SEJ’s Fund for Environmental Journalism (FEJ) Summer 2012 grant cycle. In addition to the grant, SEJ will also provide mentoring support to any grantees requesting it.The Society of Environmental Journalists launched the Fund for Environmental Journalism in 2010, to support reporting projects and entrepreneurial journalism ventures related to the environment. For the first time in its history SEJ began awarding small grants to both staff and freelance journalists, to cover costs of travel, lab testing, graphics development, website costs, and other budget items without which journalists might have been unable to produce and distribute specific timely stories about important environmental issues.

Congratulations to the winners in the Summer 2012 round:

Jane Braxton Little and Winifred Bird
Greenville, CA, USA and Nagano, Japan
$3,500 for travel to the Ukraine and Fukushima to produce an article on approaches to managing forest contamination in the aftermath of nuclear disaster

Tara Lohan
San Francisco, CA
$730 for travel expenses to support a feature story and photographic essay showing the impact on rural communities of fresh water diversion to Las Vegas

Barbara Moran
Brookline, MA
$1,325 for travel and media-production expenses for articles examining the impact on environmental pollution and public health of industrial laundries in New England

Erica Peterson
Louisville, KY
$3,500 for air-testing expenses to support reporting for a radio series about industrial pollution in Louisville, Kentucky

Meera Subramanian
West Barnstable, MA
$3,050 for travel expenses to produce articles, and chapters for a book, about sustainable growth and development in India

To learn more about the FEJ awards program, including applicant eligibility and submission guidelines, or to see information and links about past awards, please go to the Fund for Environmental Journalism web page. We are currently fundraising for the next FEJ round of grants. Please consider making your own donation today, to help SEJ build the Fund for Environmental Journalism and support new work! Many in this field are adapting to disruptions in their employment and new methods in media; yet they remain steadfast in their goal of providing our communities every day with vitally important information on environment-related issues. If you would like to help experienced environmental journalists to continue producing rich, rigorously investigated and unbiased content, please make a gift on SEJ’s secure website.

sej outstanding feature story

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Thrilled that the SEJ 11th Annual Awards for Reporting on the Environment selected “India’s Vanishing Vultures” for First Place for Outstanding Feature Story.

The judges said “this story by Meera Subramanian was extremely well researched, compellingly written and showed how the impact of the decline of these uncharismatic birds is dramatically affecting the health and the environment of this South Asian nation.”

I, in turn, select the Society of Environmental Journalists as an outstanding journalists’ association. They’ve been instrumental in helping me tackle this challenging trade, especially as a freelancer.

california condor faces lead menace

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After more than three decades on the brink of extinction, the California condor (Gymnogyps californianus) — the largest and most threatened wild bird species in the United States — is making a modest recovery, thanks to intensive captive breeding and medical intervention. But troubling data reported this week suggest that unless hunters change their practices, the condor will require extensive support in perpetuity if it is to survive in the wild. [Read more…]

an ill wind: the trouble with turbines

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I’ve been following with interest the rapid expansion of wind energy and its impact on wildlife. Excited that I had a chance to delve into the issue for Nature magazine. Here’s how it starts:

Marc Bechard turned a worried eye skywards as he walked among the limestone hills at the southern tip of Spain. It was October 2008, and thousands of griffon vultures — along with other vulnerable raptors — were winging towards the Strait of Gibraltar and beyond to Africa. But first they had to navigate some treacherous airspace. The landscape on either side of the strait bristles with wind turbines up to 170 metres high, armed with blades that slice the air at 270 kilometres per hour. [Read more…]

pick your poison

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I once helped draw blood from a wild falcon, its lithe wings gently lashed, its head covered to calm it. Biologists have been taking such tests for more than thirty years, tracking toxins in the predatory birds as they make landfall after spending months in Central and South America, where chemicals such as DDT and PCB aren’t banned like they are in the United States, since the 1970s. A month earlier I’d heard Charles Henny, a U.S. Geological Survey wildlife biologist with a focus on toxicology, say that by 2004 there was almost no detectable DDT in these falcons, whose populations had crashed due to DDT but then recovered. But there was something new on his radar. “There’s other stuff that’s replaced it,” he said. “My concern right now is the flame retardants.”

Read the rest at Dissent…

reading & writing

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I have fallen in love with many a friend after seeing their bookshelves. Forget the eyes. The books that line the shelves of our homes, or lean in precarious piles on the floor, or crowd out our bedsides, are the windows to one’s soul. We see familiars we have at home, titles we’ve always meant to explore. We discover, always, something new. We see how they organize. Or don’t. We see the merging of a couple’s disparate and/or overlapping tastes and interests. I fantasize about a trip that took a lifetime, just visiting friends around the world and spending all my time reading their books. I fantasize boundless free time at home, to even get through my own. [Read more…]

you can chaat me up anytime, baby

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It can be the tiniest of things that one loves about a place far from home. These aren’t my finely manicured nails (obviously), but here’s a decent photo of the chaat called golgappa (pani puri) that I had at a friend’ parents’ house. The little puris were crisp, containing the pani liquid of mango and tamarind we poured on top of the potato and chick pea filling. One bite, maybe two, some dribbling down the wrists, every taste on the tongue fired off.

Here’s a recipe that looks like it might could work, but i fear this just wouldn’t taste the same in Cape Cod.

deportation

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I arrive in Amsterdam as the sun breaks over the horizon, and the airport is familiar. I was just here. I came through on my way to…where? Abu Dhabi? Nairobi? The travel blurs, and I forget to keep seeing, too comfortable in the movement. The woman’s cries as soon as I settle on flight KLM flight 871 to Delhi awaken me. She is keening, repeating a phrase over and over in a language I don’t recognize. Louder, repetitive, insistent, urgent. I’m hurting or Let me go or Leave me alone. All heads turn towards her voice, rising somewhere from the last center rows of the plane as passengers place their bags overhead, unfurl cheap fleece blankets. But there is no woman—or is it a child?—to be seen. Just five large men, one in an orange vest, another with a shiny metal badge affixed to his hip, one with a shaved head, all staring inward to where this invisible but beckoning creature must be. They don’t speak to her, or gesture as though to restrain her or help her. They just watch, silent, patient. All the rest of the passengers look at each other for some guidance. Is she hurt? Why aren’t they helping? What is going on? Is it a child? The flight attendant near us explains. [Read more…]

thirteen miles

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It took two hours and thirteen minutes to travel the 13 miles from the Barnstable bus stand to Sagamore Bridge, the definitive point between “on Cape” and “off.”  I took a front seat, looking over the bus driver’s shoulder at the road ahead, as we pulled onto Route 6, flying for those first few miles. Then, a long line of brake lights lit up like a Christmas strand. The Sagamore Bridge, where peregrine falcons considered nesting amidst its metalwork last year, is under construction. The pair was spotted only once this year before they fled, surely, from the noise and construction, the men hoisted into the heavens by cranes and lifts, bringing blowtorches and making human thunder. Bridges have always fascinated me, the engineering feat of building such structures that can stand for decades of dedicated use, letting us leap over water, canyons and gullies. [Read more…]