Collier Journalism Award

2023

Paige Williams is an American journalist, author, and staff writer at The New Yorker.  Paige won for her article, “Howl: Killing Wolves has Become a Political Act.” Her winning article discusses the reintroduction of wolves into Idaho back in the nineties and its role as the object of political controversy ever since. With Idaho’s long reputation of hostility toward the grey wolf, an aggressive new law allows people to hunt or trap as many as they can. She is the author of The Dinosaur Artist, which the Times named as one of its 100 Notable Books of 2018. Her journalism has won the National Magazine Award for feature writing and has appeared in anthologies including The Best American Magazine Writing and The Best American Crime Writing. She was a fellow at MacDowell, and a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.

2022

Agostino Petroni is a freelance journalist and author living in Apulia, Italy. His article, “Death by Many Cuts,” was published in the 2021 Autumn issue of Earth Island Journal. It tells the story of how ancient olive trees in the Puglia region of Italy are being killed by a deadly bacteria, xylella fastidiosa, which obstructs nutrients and water from flowing through their vascular tissues. He is a 2020 MA-Politics graduate from the Columbia Journalism School and a 2021 Pulitzer Center Climate Science Reporting Fellow. His work has appeared in numerous outlets including the BBC, CNN Travel, Revista Época, MSN Canada, The Washington Post, National Geographic, NPR, PBS, The Atlantic, Fortune, Scientific American, Salon, Popular Science, Atlas Obscura, Mongabay, The Nation, Discover Magazine, and many others.

2021

Gabriel Popkin is an independent journalist from Mount Rainier, Maryland, covering science, the environment, and society. His work has been published in the New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, Nature, Science, the Washington Post, the Washington Post Magazine, American Forests, National Geographic, NPR, the Atlantic, Discover, and many more. His winning article, "Can Genetic Engineering Bring Back the American Chestnut?," was published on April 30, 2020 (online) by New York Times Magazine and tells the story of an attempt through genetic engineering to rescue the great American Chestnut tree which was all but wiped out by 1940.

2020

Diana Kruzman is a freelance reporter earning her master's in journalism and Near East Studies at New York University. Her article, "India's Sacred Groves Are Disappearing, Taking Biodiversity and Culture With Them," was published online November 30, 2019, by Earther. It tells the story of the loss of small and increasingly isolated sacred old growth groves of southern India and their gradual destruction due to competing interests.

2019

Adrian Higgins, a gardening columnist for The Washington Post, has specialized in writing about gardening, landscape architecture, and related environmental areas. His winning article, "Scientists thought they had created the perfect tree. But it became a nightmare," was published in the September 17, 2018, issue of The Washington Post Magazine. It traces the history of the Bradford pear tree, from the time its progenitor was introduced to the United States from China around 1918 to the present.

2018

Carson Vaughan, a freelance writer from Nebraska whose work has appeared in the New York Times, USA Today, the New Yorker, the Atlantic, Vice, Smithsonian, Slate, Audubon, and more, won for, "Uprooting FDR's 'Great Wall of Trees,'" published online on the Food & Environmental Reporting Network (thefern.org) on November 1, 2017.

2017

Timothy A. Schuler, editor of and frequent contributor to Landscape Architecture Magazine’s NOW section, won for his article, “Searching for a Sign: Inside the Battle to Document and Save Old Trees That May Have Once Marked Native American Trails,” published in the November 2016 issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine.

2016

Phil McKenna is a freelance journalist focusing on energy and the environment. His piece was co-published as "Life in the Death Zone" at NOVA Next and as "The Boys Who Loved Birds" at The Big Roundtable in February 2015. McKenna's article tells the epic story of two nature-loving friends on opposite sides of the Iron Curtain, and the ongoing transformation of the Iron Curtain’s "death zone" into a European Green Belt.

2015

Michael Gaige, a freelance conservation biologist and educator based in Saratoga Lake, New York, won for his article, "Wolf Trees: Elders of the Eastern Forest," published in American Forests. The article tells the story of relict "wolf trees," a term used by early twentieth-century foresters to describe undesirable old shade trees that spread like wolves and "preyed" upon forest resources needed by more marketable species.

2009

Michael Jamison is a Flathead Valley bureau reporter for the Missoulian (circulation 300,000) since 1997. With a bachelor's degree in English and a master's degree in journalism, both from the University of Montana, he is a general-assignment reporter who must gather all kinds of news in a large geographic territory that includes Plum Creek Timber, Glacier National Park, the U.S. Forest Service, and Flathead National Forest. Over the years, Jamison has had a strong, sustained interest in covering forests and their history, ecology, and management.

2006

Jeffrey Barnard from Grants Pass, Oregon, is the southern Oregon correspondent for the Associated Press, having worked for the AP since 1983. He is responsible for stories and photos of general interest in southern Oregon, with a particular focus on the environment. He was named first AP state environmental writer, 2003. His longstanding areas of coverage include salmon restoration, forests management, wildfire, Klamath Basin water, and commercial fishing.

2005

Michelle Nijhuis is a contributing editor of the environmental journal High Country News and a correspondent for Orion, and her work has appeared in publications including Smithsonian, Salon.com, The Christian Science Monitor, The San Francisco Chronicle, Mother Jones, Sierra, Audubon, and the anthology Best American Science Writing. She wrote an engaging and informative history of dendrochronology (tree-ring research) for High Country News (Jan. 24, 2005).

2004

Zachary Coile is a Washington correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle. Coile regularly pursues stories related to natural resource issues and has recently been writing about forest thinning practices and mill operations in the Tongass National Forest of Alaska—work that directly resulted from his FHS-sponsored attendance at the IJNR Midnight Sun Institute held in Alaska in July 2003. FHS congratulates him for demonstrating a serious interest in forest and conservation issues and for showing outstanding professional growth in journalism.

2003

The 2003 Collier Award went to Isak Howell, a staff writer for the Roanoke Times (Roanoke, Virginia) who covers news and features about a local municipal government while also pursuing stories about environmental and natural resource issues. Howell works with his editors to ensure the newspaper maintains cohesive natural resource coverage. He has authored news stories on such topics as water quality and management, forest planning on the Jefferson National Forest, outbreaks of gypsy moth infestations, and severe drought conditions in western Virginia. He attended the IJNR Low Country Institute held in 2002.