Expedition-style Learning Programs for Fellows — 2009

IJNR learning expeditions help reporters and editors at all career stages to gain perspective and understanding and to become better storytellers. Mid-career, early-career and veteran reporters and editors from a diverse range of newspapers, magazines, broadcast operations and on-line news organizations are chosen to participate. Journalists working for smaller organizations, including tribal and ethnic news media, are encouraged to apply. IJNR fellowship awards cover the costs of meals, lodging, chartered bus and all other field activities during the expeditions. In addition, some travel stipends are available.

These expenses-paid fellowships are designed for reporters and editors who aspire to produce deeper, more explanatory news coverage of issues that affect growth, economic development, rural communities, natural resources and the environment.

Funding for IJNR programs comes from a broad spectrum of charitable foundations, conservation and environment groups, state and federal government agencies, news-media groups, natural-resource companies and trade associations, as well as individual donors. (See IJNR's Sponsors page.)

Please review How To Apply for details on selection criteria, application materials and costs.

Great Waters Institute

This journey in the Lake Erie Basin will explore parts of Ontario, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York. Fourteen journalists selected to be Great Waters Fellow will examine timely issues of water, energy, food production, climate, fisheries, shipping, shoreline development and invasive-species control that apply throughout Great Lakes region:

Themes and Issues to Examine:

• Adapting to Climate Change: Lower Lake Levels and Warmer Waters
• Energy for the Great Lakes Economy: Pros and Cons of Coal, Hydro and Wind
• Toxic Hot Spots: Regulation, Recovery and the Pace of Remediation
• Findings and Trends in Research on the Lake Erie “Dead Zone”
• An Endangered Species Case Study: The Lake Erie Water Snake
• Control of Aquatic Invasive Specie: Ballast Water and Other Challenges
• Water Diversions and the Future of the Great Lakes Compact
• International Aspects of the Great Lakes Fishery: Complexities and Conflicts
• Avian Migration Corridors and Island Ecosystems

Fellows will examine the ongoing controversy over Great Lakes water levels and historical dredging on the St. Clair River, as well as the impact that climate change may be having on water quantity throughout the Great Lakes Basin. Leading scientists will describe recovery efforts for the rare Lake Erie water snake, a listed species in the United States and Canada. Fellows will meet shipping officials, scientists and environmentalists at one of the region's leading ports to discuss issues of ballast-water management and exotic invasive species. They will also meet with regional biologists investigating causes and consequences of massive die-offs of loons and other waterfowl.

Later in the trip, Fellows will tour a hydropower facility, a coal plant and a wind farm. They will visit the largest freshwater fishing port in the world and explore cross-border controversies in fisheries management. Journalists will meet with biologists on a remote Lake Erie island to see how burgeoning cormorant populations are affecting fisheries and other birds and to learn about cormorant-control efforts. Journalists also will spend a night or two on Ontario's famed Pelee Island, taking part in migratory bird mist-net surveys.

Puget Sound Institute

This expedition in the northwestern corner of the state of Washington will examine issues of water, transportation, land development, energy and aquatic ecology that affect the Puget Sound Basin. While emphasizing connections between the Sound itself and the diverse land areas that drain into it, the program will expose journalists to consequences that population growth and efforts to promote remedial actions.

Fourteen to 18 journalists will take part in the Institute as Fellows. Using Seattle as a base, they will travel the length of the Sound, from Whidbey Island and Skagit Valley in the north to Tacoma and Olympia in the south. During the trip, the Fellows will learn about water contamination, rising water temperatures, shrinking snow packs, lower summer stream flows, and the precarious health of orcas, harbor seals, salmon and marine birds. They will visit residential developments, mass-transit operations and shoreline-restoration and oyster-recovery projects.

In addition, they will meet with land-use planners, state and tribal policy makers, and leaders of grassroots groups who are seeking to increase awareness of Puget Sound issues. In conversations with more than 50 experts who represent a broad spectrum of views, the journalists will explore the economic, environmental and social ramifications of such as:

Themes and Issues to Examine:

• Land-Use Patterns and Population Growth: Challenges to the Estuary’s Health
• Energy Security and Food Security: Rivalries Over Land and Water
• Adapting to Climate Change in the Pacific Northwest
• Northwest Farming Trends: Crops, Workers and Markets
• Opportunities and Obstacles for Public Transit
• Watershed Recovery and Restoration: The Science and the Politics

Energy Country Institute

This expedition across parts of the Southwest’s Four Corners region will explore issues of energy, water and air quality that have tribal, state and national implications:

Themes and Issues to Explore:

• Supplying America’s Energy for the New Century
• Developing and Conserving the West’s Natural Bounty:
• Coal, Oil, Methane, Wind, Solar, Nuclear and Geothermal
• Energy Booms and Public Lands after the Bush-Cheney Era
• Atmospheric and Stored Carbon: Caps, Trades, Credits and Taxes
• Nuclear Legacies and Nuclear Futures
• Water in an Age of Scarcity: Law, Policy and Science
• Contamination Lessons: Uranium Mining in the West
• Cutting Through the Haze: Air Quality in the Four Corners Region

The Four Corners region is not only a dynamic hub of the Western boom in fossil-fuels exploration and production, but also a hot spot in national efforts to bring alternative energy sources to consumers. As they travel through parts of New Mexico and Colorado, the 14 to 18 journalists selected to be Energy Country Fellows will meet with community leaders, resource-company managers, conservation advocates, scientists, regulators and policy-makers—as well as with local people who derive a living from natural resources.

Fellows will spend time on working ranches and on public and tribal lands. They will visit restoration sites, scientific study areas, and development fields for natural gas, oil, coal and renewable sources of energy. They will have opportunities for hiking (and perhaps camping) in places of longstanding cultural importance. Stops on the trip are likely to include Albuquerque, Santa Fe and nearby pueblos, Farmington, Acoma, the Southern Ute Reservation and Durango.