Alex Wigglesworth

Alex Wigglesworth reports on how environmental forces and public policy shape life in California, with a particular focus on wildfires, desert communities and the hazards facing people who live near industry and aging infrastructure. She covers the Inland Empire and Mojave Desert for the Los Angeles Times and is part of the masthead’s environment team. Her work frequently combines breaking news with deeper examinations of climate risk, land use and regulatory performance.

Wildfires, megadrought and extreme conditions

Wildfire coverage is a core part of Wigglesworth’s brief, and the Los Angeles Times has formally assigned her to cover fires as part of its Metro environment team.

She reports on front-line incidents, such as Southern California blazes where fire crews sift through ashes and salvage personal items like family wedding rings from burned homes. Her stories track how increasingly volatile fire seasons intersect with public safety and emergency response, including high surf and heat waves that drive lifeguards to rescue thousands of people along California’s beaches in a single summer.

She also tackles the long arc of climate pressure behind those events, writing on whether California is experiencing a decades-long megadrought and what that means for water supplies, ecosystems and communities in the state. Across these pieces she treats wildfire, drought and extreme weather as connected symptoms of a changing climate rather than isolated disasters.

Mojave Desert communities, land use and wildlife

Wigglesworth’s beat centers on the Inland Empire and Mojave Desert, and she follows how development, gentrification and conservation are reshaping those landscapes.

She writes about local figures such as a rattlesnake wrangler in Joshua Tree, using their work with reptiles to explore how desert communities are changing and how residents respond to the influx of new arrivals and new attitudes toward the environment. Her coverage of the Western Joshua tree examines efforts to protect a keystone desert species, tracing how policy proposals, scientific assessments and public debates converge around land use in the high desert.

She has produced detailed reporting on a Marine base program in the Mojave that shelters young desert tortoises until their shells can withstand raven attacks, explaining how captive rearing fits into broader attempts to save an at-risk species on military land. In newsletters and TV segments, she highlights restoration projects such as beaver-engineered creeks and canals that help a burn scar north of Lake Tahoe recover, showing how engineered and natural systems interact to repair damage. This strand of her work is grounded in the specifics of desert places and species while keeping sight of the planning decisions that determine which communities and habitats thrive.

Industrial hazards, infrastructure and regulation

Wigglesworth reports extensively on the intersection of environmental risk, industrial activity and government oversight, often in communities far from coastal centers of power. Her coverage of a company at the center of a Boyle Heights fire and subsequent air-quality concerns looks at the firm’s safety record, past incidents and the scrutiny it faces from regulators after a blaze that endangered nearby residents. In follow-up reporting on the same area, she details how Lineage Logistics has agreed to spend up to $100 million on cleanup efforts in Boyle Heights as air regulators demand action, illustrating how enforcement pressure and public anger can translate into expensive remediation obligations for industry. She covers infrastructure failures as environmental health stories, showing how California is set to receive $27.5 million in federal funds to locate and replace toxic lead service lines, and what that means for cities trying to address legacy contamination in their water systems.

Her reporting on a $12.5-million settlement in a California wine bribery case ties financial penalties to questions about regulatory culture and enforcement in the state’s alcohol industry, demonstrating her interest in how rules are applied in practice. These stories share a focus on corporate behavior, government agencies’ performance and the consequences of regulatory decisions for communities living with pollution or corruption.

Science, global risk and environmental research

Beyond California, Wigglesworth takes on complex scientific work about global risks and translates it into accessible reporting.

In one feature she examines research into the climatic and food-system impacts of nuclear war, explaining how limited regional conflicts between countries such as India and Pakistan could still kill hundreds of millions of people through explosions, fires, radiation and subsequent famine. She reports that food production from major crops and fisheries could fall by up to 42% in some scenarios, with billions dying worldwide from starvation if nuclear exchanges disrupted climate and agriculture. Her environment newsletters include coverage of California’s role in international efforts to protect nature, connecting local policy debates to broader biodiversity and conservation initiatives.

Across these pieces she relies heavily on scientific studies, modelling and expert interviews, emphasizing how abstract global risks translate into human consequences and policy choices.

Earlier in her career, Wigglesworth worked as a general assignment reporter for major Philadelphia outlets, experience that underpins her ability to move between breaking news and longer-form environmental features. At the Los Angeles Times she now combines that versatility with a defined environment beat, using it to examine how climate change, land use and regulation are reshaping California’s deserts and the communities that live in their shadow.