Catrin Einhorn
Catrin Einhorn covers biodiversity, wildlife and ecosystems for The New York Times, with a consistent focus on how human decisions determine the fate of species and the integrity of nature. She reports on biodiversity as part of the Climate and Environment desk, writing about plants, animals and people on the front lines as well as the political and economic forces behind them. Her work blends policy reporting, on-the-ground stories and explanatory pieces, and is informed by experience in long-term investigative and multimedia projects.
Wildlife, extinction and endangered species
Einhorn’s core coverage tracks the crisis of extinction and efforts to prevent it, frequently grounding broad concepts in specific species and places. She has chronicled initiatives like the Phoenix Species Project, which directs hundreds of millions of dollars to help 100 imperiled animals and plants recover, showing how targeted funding can change trajectories for species at the brink.
She follows the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List updates, using new assessments of global wildlife status to illustrate patterns of decline, recovery and uncertainty across taxa. Her coral reef reporting includes work on encouraging scientific and conservation developments, highlighting where marine ecosystems show resilience against environmental stress.
Her endangered species coverage extends beyond lists and funding to the lived realities of ecosystems under pressure. Whether writing about terrestrial reptiles or marine life, she links scientific assessments to concrete habitat changes, community efforts and the politics of protection.
The emphasis is on specificity: particular lizards, birds, corals and plants become entry points into broader questions about how societies value nonhuman life and who bears the consequences when protections erode.
Endangered Species Act and conservation policy
Einhorn regularly reports on the Endangered Species Act and related U.S. conservation laws, treating legal and regulatory shifts as stories about real landscapes and organisms rather than abstract policy debates. She has covered attempts by the Trump administration to weaken core endangered species protections, including moves to alter how harm is defined and how habitat is safeguarded, explaining technical changes in plain language and linking them to concrete risks for vulnerable species. In her reporting on habitat rollbacks, she traces how rule changes cascade into decisions about land use, energy development and agriculture, and which animals lose protections as a result.
Judicial decisions feature prominently in this strand of her work.
In coverage of court rulings that strip protections from imperiled species such as a dunes sagebrush lizard, she details both the legal reasoning and the ecological stakes, including fragmentation of habitat and the role of industry. By pairing statutory analysis with field perspectives from scientists, advocates and affected communities, she shows how conservation law operates in practice and where it fails.
Across these pieces, the through-line is an insistence that regulatory language, court opinions and agency guidance are inseparable from the realities of extinction risk on the ground.
Global nature deals and conservation finance
Einhorn connects U.S. conservation battles to global efforts to protect nature, frequently framing stories within international biodiversity negotiations and benchmarks. Her reporting from the United Nations biodiversity talks in Montreal explains the “30x30” goal and other targets, describing how nearly every country signed on to a sweeping agreement intended to protect large portions of Earth’s land and oceans. She examines what such deals mean beyond diplomatic communiqués, focusing on implementation, funding gaps and the tension between conservation ambitions and economic interests.
Conservation finance is a recurring theme, handled with an eye to who pays, who benefits and which species are prioritized. The Phoenix Species Project coverage shows how philanthropic and private money is organized into a large fund for at-risk plants and animals, and how project selection reflects both scientific criteria and donor priorities. Her work on nature-related assessments that were suppressed or sidelined by political decisions, such as a report killed under the Trump administration and later released independently, underscores the vulnerability of scientific guidance in policy-making.
Together, these stories present biodiversity protection as a contested arena of international commitments, national politics and financial power.
Climate impacts, faith and everyday life
Although biodiversity is her center of gravity, Einhorn also reports on how climate change intersects with daily life, culture and technology. She has covered mass seabird die-offs linked to El Niño patterns, using the event to explore how changing climate regimes destabilize ecosystems and to highlight what scientists can and cannot explain. In stories on water cuts in the Colorado River basin, she shows how climate-driven scarcity is managed through policy, negotiations and infrastructure, with consequences for communities and landscapes downstream.
Her work includes service-oriented coverage, such as an explainer on plug-in solar panels that walks through safety considerations, installation choices and practical trade-offs for households. She has written about the connection between faith and environmental action, portraying religious communities that frame stewardship of the Earth as a spiritual responsibility and examining how belief shapes climate and conservation engagement. Beyond the environment desk, her background includes long-term investigative and narrative projects on sexual harassment affecting working-class women, refugee resettlement, violence, same-sex marriage and seemingly small but resonant local stories, experience that informs her approach to sourcing and human detail.
She has worked in film, audio and visual storytelling as well as print, using multiple formats to tell complex environmental and social stories.
4 more environment journalists.
Alan Halaly
Alan Halaly is a water reporter at the Las Vegas Review-Journal who treats the Colorado River as a working system, not a backdrop, making its governance, infrastructure and risks central to his beat. He covers how policy decisions and infrastructure projects shape the region’s water future, linking high-level choices on the Colorado River, dams, mining and data centers to everyday consequences under mounting heat and growth pressures. He reports deeply on new laws, lawsuits and regulatory shifts, focusing on on-the-ground impacts. His coverage spans Colorado River cuts, Hoover Dam operations, extreme weather, heat and parks, septic system rules, workplace and public health risks, lithium and gold mines, protected landscapes, data centers, AI infrastructure and public funding. Previously he reported for metropolitan dailies, digital outlets and public media, including the Miami Herald, WUFT, The Daily Beast and Miami New Times, with work recognized by Hearst, ONA and the Society of Environmental Journalists.
Alejandra Borunda
Alejandra Borunda reports on how climate change affects human health for NPR. Her work treats global warming as a direct cause of physical and mental health risks. She covers extreme heat, including undercounted deaths, lost sleep and local efforts to track heat-related fatalities. She also reports on wildfire smoke, hurricanes, disease spread such as dengue fever, trauma, stress and unequal health impacts. Her stories examine how communities protect themselves and recover, as well as practical solutions involving climate-resilient crops, agriculture and diet. Before NPR, she wrote about climate science and environmental issues for National Geographic, including glacier retreat, shade and heat inequity, and shrinking ice-fishing seasons. A former climate scientist, she combines field reporting with scientific data to connect atmospheric research to everyday risks, choices and people’s lived experiences.
Alex Lubben
Alex Lubben is an environment reporter at The Times-Picayune/The Advocate who connects climate risk to policy, industry and community change. He covers Gulf warming, flood protection, coastal restoration, wetlands litigation, industrial projects such as SpaceX’s possible expansion, invasive species and local ecosystems. His reporting tracks how law, politics and corporate decisions shape levees, drainage, marshes and long-term resilience. He also examines climate relocation, housing and labor, showing how hurricanes, floods and wildfires displace vulnerable communities and expose gaps in government systems. He works on a small environment team and brings an investigative background to document work, data analysis, legal and policy research, and field reporting. His work has appeared in VICE News, The Center for Public Integrity, The Nation, Jewish Currents and NBC News.
Alex Wigglesworth
Alex Wigglesworth reports on how climate, land use and public policy shape California communities. She covers the Inland Empire and Mojave Desert for the Los Angeles Times and is part of its environment team. Her beat includes wildfires, megadrought, extreme weather, desert development, conservation, wildlife, industrial hazards, aging infrastructure and regulatory enforcement. She has covered Western Joshua trees, desert tortoises, beaver-led restoration, toxic lead pipes, air-quality concerns after industrial fires and the effects of nuclear war on food systems. Earlier, she was a general assignment reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Daily News and Philly.com. She combines breaking news with detailed reporting grounded in scientific studies, modeling and expert interviews. Her work connects fires, drought and other hazards to climate change, while examining how agencies, companies and land-use decisions affect people and ecosystems.