Environment Journalistsin Australia

Adelaide Lang combines climate reporting with courtroom and Indigenous-focused journalism. She reports for The Daily Telegraph, with work also appearing in The Canberra Times, and contributes guest pieces to National Indigenous Times. Her environment coverage focuses on climate-threatened islands, community resilience and how policy decisions affect people facing direct environmental risks. She follows local campaigns, adaptation efforts and political pressure while keeping the human effects clear. Lang also covers court proceedings involving public officials, including the trial of State MP Gareth Ward over historical sexual and indecent assault charges. Her reporting examines how allegations are tested in court and how the justice system handles accusations against people in power. With more than five years in digital media and courtroom reporting, she writes clear, factual accounts of events, legal processes and their consequences.

Ashleigh McMillan is a breaking news reporter at The Age. She stands out for covering the environment through public events, infrastructure and everyday city life. Her reporting tracks how protests, policy decisions and sudden incidents change routines, public safety and the spaces people move through. She covers fast-moving stories across Victoria, with a focus on community tension, access and the lived effects of official decisions. Her work includes protests and public demonstrations, crime and courts, transport and ticketing changes, traffic experiments, weather, and environmental conditions in the city. She reports on what people see and feel on the ground, with attention to victims, commuters, residents and the practical consequences of legal and infrastructure decisions.

Bareket Falk uses environmental stories to show how growing bodies handle physical stress, especially heat, during exercise. She is a pediatric exercise physiologist and kinesiology professor whose work focuses on how children, adolescents and adults respond to activity across growth and development. She writes evidence-led explainers for The Conversation that test assumptions about children’s vulnerability and turn decades of exercise science into clear, practical guidance. Her core piece looks at how children and adults cope with extreme heat, walking through basic thermoregulation and challenging the idea that children are automatically more fragile. Her journalism draws directly on research into blood flow, sweating, body size and growth, keeping technical detail tight and translating findings into concrete behaviours such as pacing activity, seeking shade and hydration. She is interested in how physical activity interacts with maturation, body composition and recovery, and uses data to check myths about kids’ risk.

Bec Lorrimer is a visual journalist and picture editor who tells environment stories through photography and careful image selection at the Guardian. She works at the intersection of climate coverage and visual editing, using picture-led formats to show how global heating and other environmental pressures play out in everyday life. Her environment beat centres on picture galleries that track the lived experience of climate extremes, including record high temperatures in South Korea, with in pictures sequences that foreground the scale of global heating over text-led analysis. She also contributes to monthly roundups of the strongest photos and human-centred features such as a nursing home story, focusing on people and places under pressure. As a global visual editor and assistant picture editor on international fronts, she selects images across environment, politics, culture and general news, drawing on her background as a photographer, video director and photo producer.

Blanca Begert treats climate change as a system of policies, infrastructure and markets, following money and regulation at the same time. She is a climate and energy reporter on the environment desk at the Los Angeles Times, covering California’s power sector, oil and gas industry and efforts to cut emissions. Her work tracks how state agencies and legislators design and enforce rules for utilities, refiners and other energy companies, often highlighting friction between climate goals and business interests and linking corporate earnings to consumer costs and political pressure. She previously covered California climate policy and politics for Inside Climate News and Politico. Begert has extensive experience reporting on forests, Indigenous land rights and carbon markets in Latin America and has worked as a reporter, editor and multimedia producer on environmental stories, including video journalism.

Brendan Wintle uses quantitative ecology to link species science directly to policy, budgets and real-world conservation trade-offs, turning complex modelling and economics into clear, decision-focused analysis. He is a professor of biodiversity conservation and director of the Melbourne Biodiversity Institute at the University of Melbourne, and a principal investigator in the Quantitative and Applied Ecology group. His work for The Conversation and other outlets focuses on threatened species, ecosystem restoration, extinction risk, fire and climate shocks, land use and conservation spending. He reports in a restrained, evidence-led way, stressing population viability analysis, habitat modelling, systematic conservation planning and cost-efficiency. His coverage shows how small, fragmented habitat patches, megafires, restoration pledges and human behaviour shape biodiversity, and frames conservation as a long-term investment decision grounded in numbers, uncertainty and trade-offs.

Calum Cunningham is a wildfire scientist and pyrogeographer whose reporting treats major fire seasons as case studies in long‑term climate and ecological trends rather than one‑off disasters. He writes for The Conversation on extreme wildfires and wider fire regimes within the environment beat, explaining why recent fire seasons, including those in France and Spain, are “off the charts” using current research and metrics such as burned area, energy release and duration. His work as lead author of a Nature Ecology and Evolution study on the global rise of the most extreme wildfires anchors his coverage in quantified trend data and clear climate signals. A postdoctoral researcher at the University of Tasmania, he studies how climate change alters bushfire regimes, landscapes and ecosystems, and draws on research into predators, scavenging and invasive species to show how fire reshapes habitats, species interactions and community resilience.

Catherine Lovelock is a marine ecologist and academic writer who focuses on how mangrove forests and other coastal ecosystems shape, and are shaped by, climate change and human activity. She writes for The Conversation on coastal protection, blue carbon and climate mitigation, linking sediment accretion, nutrient loading and sea-level rise to policy and practice. Her coverage explains how mangrove forests store carbon and defend coastlines, how carbon moves through soils and roots, and why different wetland plant communities sequester carbon at different rates. She reports on global mangrove trends, sea-level rise, nutrient enrichment, mangrove ghost forests and ecosystem vulnerability. Her work also examines policy clashes, mangrove restoration, and the effectiveness of plantations for climate goals, weaving ecology, climate science and governance into clear, evidence-led analysis.

Jano Gibson is an Antarctic reporter for ABC News who covers how policy, science and extreme events affect ecosystems and people in remote regions. His beat includes the Australian Antarctic Program, Southern Ocean wildlife, bird flu, legacy pollution, research funding, workplace culture and environmental risk. He has reported on mass seal deaths, staff withdrawals from Macquarie Island, contaminated sites at Wilkes Station, Antarctic research funding and reforms after bullying and harassment findings. He also covers Tasmania’s salmon industry, energy infrastructure and gun laws. His reporting combines field work, interviews with scientists and administrators, official inquiries and inspection reports, with close attention to data, regulation and technical detail. He writes digital news and features, appears on audio programs and produces longer field reports. He previously worked for ABC in another bureau and The Sydney Morning Herald.

Jennifer Dudley-Nicholson reports on how technology, transport and electrification are reshaping energy and everyday life. She covers technology, transport, AI and renewable energy for AAP. Her beat focuses on the practical effects of the energy transition, including home electrification, energy costs, electric vehicles, rooftop solar, batteries, renewables, storage, microgrids and the changing grid. She follows the rules, money and consumer impacts behind climate targets, with close attention to affordability, equity and who benefits. Her reporting also examines carbon credits, safeguard mechanisms, solar regulation, data centres, green hydrogen, mining electrification, workforce needs and regional energy projects. She uses clear numbers, policy detail and household case studies to show how new technologies affect resilience and costs. Over more than two decades, her work has appeared on the AAP newswire, in major newspapers and digital outlets, and on radio and podcasts.

Kimberley Price is an audio current affairs journalist at the ABC whose work tracks how national policy shifts play out in everyday life, focusing on how national decisions reach households, communities and the natural world. She reports on clean energy transition and everyday transport, following rising fuel prices, the end of the federal fuel excise cut and the choice between petrol, electric and hybrid vehicles, using case studies and national sales figures to frame the transition as a consumer and infrastructure story. She covers wildlife disease and biosecurity, explaining bird flu outbreaks, H5 strain spread, national management plans and public guidance. She reports on online safety, social media regulation, sextortion and harm prevention as systemic issues. Her broader work spans social history, law reform, child protection, sport and culture, using clear scripting, interviews, data and personal stories in flagship radio news formats.

Li Menghan covers the junction of environmental policy and scientific research for China Daily. Her work is distinct for tying technical research to green development and governance. She reports on China’s green transition, green mines, mineral exploration, ocean governance, coastal pollution control, and shoreline regeneration. She also covers space and planetary science, deep physics, life sciences, evolution, ecology, solar cells, elderly care robots, and other applied technologies. Her reporting follows national plans, laboratory breakthroughs, and multi-institution research, and it explains how science, industry, and policy intersect in practice.

Mark Hemer writes directly from his expertise in ocean climate, using physical detail and practical framing to explain how a warming sea reshapes coasts, wildlife and energy systems. He is a journalist for The Conversation and a principal research scientist in oceans and atmosphere at a major research organisation. His core beat is ocean climate, waves, sea level and coastal extremes, focusing on erosion, flooding, extreme events and coastal hazards. He also covers ocean renewable energy, linking wave records, coastal dynamics and energy planning, and co-authors technical and policy pieces on wave power as a climate solution. His explainers unpack major climate reports and basic wave science for broad audiences, including children. More recent work traces how storms, marine heatwaves and changing seas affect vulnerable marine wildlife, especially seal pups and seabird chicks.

Mark Saunokonoko is an environment reporter at the Guardian who shows how climate change and extreme weather disrupt infrastructure, trade and daily life. On the international desk, he covers extreme heat, drought, El Niño, public safety, government responses, shipping routes and supply chains. He focuses on concrete decisions and measurable disruption, not abstract climate science. His reporting on record heat examines official warnings and restrictions on outdoor activity. His work on drought and the Panama canal shows how local rainfall affects global trade. Earlier, at Nine, he reported on traffic congestion in Sydney and Melbourne using data to rank the most congested roads. He has also worked in general news and developed a true-crime podcast. That background shapes his detailed, explanatory reporting on officials, operators and the consequences of climate-linked events.

Michael Dahlstrom is a journalist, documentarian and registered wildlife and native bird carer who reports on what happens when humans and nature collide. He is Environment Editor at Yahoo News Australia, covering wildlife, animal welfare, environmental stress, human behaviour, corporate decisions and regulation. His work examines subjects including drought, bushfires, snake bites, ship strikes, toxic rat bait, invasive weeds, pest control and harm to protected species. Notable stories include a tick-ridden koala’s final moments, kangaroos sheltering near a carer’s home during bushfires, wombat burrows blocked during rabbit control and endangered crayfish remains dumped roadside. He works across investigative reporting, features, short-form stories and breaking news, curating environment coverage and commissioning contributors. He uses accessible language, vivid detail and firsthand accounts from people who work directly with animals.

Natalie Whiting stands out for treating environmental shocks, conflict and cultural change as lived conditions, and for reporting them with on-the-ground audio and television storytelling. She is a video journalist and multiplatform reporter with the ABC, working across news and current affairs teams and filing for current affairs programs, long-form television and radio news. Her beat sits within foreign reporting and covers earthquakes, war zones, detention settings, governance and cultural change across Asia and beyond. Recent work has focused on earthquakes and environmental stress in Japan, North Korea sending troops to Russia, Israel’s October 7 anniversary, war zone DNA tests, Sicily’s one-euro houses and Tokyo geisha. She has also covered Papua New Guinea, Manus Island, the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands and child protection outcomes.

Natricia Duncan is the Guardian’s Caribbean correspondent, reporting on how climate change, environmental policy and colonial history shape life across the region. She focuses on climate justice, reparations and everyday struggles over land and sea, centring the people who bear the brunt of these forces. Her reporting combines on-the-ground detail with economic and historical analysis, treating climate impacts as economic and social crises that compound existing inequalities. She covers extreme weather, coastal access, land rights and environmental justice, from climate-fuelled damage and storms to legal fights over beach privatisation. Her work on reparations and slavery’s economic legacy links archival research to present-day debates on debt, development and climate finance. She also reports on sport, culture, regional identity and spiritual traditions, showing how environment, politics and culture connect across the Caribbean.

Nick O’Malley links climate science, politics and lived conditions, treating environment coverage as a beat that runs from global climate negotiations to local weather records and species on the move. He is national climate and environment editor for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, leading reporting on climate change, environmental risk and the energy transition. His work mixes data-heavy explainers, policy analysis and on-the-ground reporting, including live coverage of fast-moving environmental events. A background as an investigative reporter shapes his focus on accountability, with governments, industries and institutions central to his stories. He covers climate science and extreme weather, emissions and energy policy, global climate diplomacy, and conservation and biodiversity. He reports using hard numbers, clear thresholds and expert analysis, with an explanatory tone that gives readers enough detail to see mechanisms, timelines and risks.

Richard Nunn turns weather into risk stories, showing how extreme conditions and fast-changing systems affect people day to day. He is News4JAX’s chief meteorologist and leads The Weather Authority coverage with clear timelines, practical guidance and preparedness. His long tenure means his forecasts draw on years of tracking hurricanes, heat waves, severe storms and cold snaps for the same audience. He focuses on impact, especially on days when multiple hazards stack together, tying radar, humidity, temperature and cloud cover directly to changing danger. He plays a central role in Hurricane Season 2026 readiness, walking viewers through evacuation plans, supply lists and home protection alongside long-range outlooks. He reports from the field on wildfire damage and smoke, anchors occasional culture and environment segments, mixes forecasting with humor and lifestyle interests, and hosts community fundraising events.

Sven Batke is a plant-focused environmental writer whose coverage stands out for treating drought, harvest failure and food security as connected systems rather than isolated events. He writes for The Conversation, using its explanatory format to translate academic insight into accessible analysis of current environmental risks. His work examines how drought and climate pressures are putting UK crop harvests and the food supply at risk, describing extended dry conditions and limited water as a severe risk of collapse for cereal and other crops. Batke focuses on food supply fragility and national risk, linking environmental shocks to vulnerabilities in food systems and policy. Drawing on research in crop science, ecology, taxonomy, climate change and plant biology, he explains the biological and systems-level reasons behind environmental news and ongoing scientific and policy debates.