This is the 6th in a series of articles about reporting skills by Knight Center students who attended the 2025 Society of Environmental Journalists conference. 

Isabella Figueroa Nogueira

By Isabella Figueroa Nogueira

Emily Renn is showing her plush prairie dogs to journalists at the SEJ conference in Arizona. Credit: Isabella Figueroa Nogueira

Standing at around 16 inches tall, the native North American rodent has been subject to significant population declines since the early 1900s.

At the Society of Environmental Journalists recent annual conference in Arizona, journalists were taught about the fluctuating numbers of prairie dogs, especially Gunnison’s prairie dogs.

Emily Renn is showing her plush prairie dogs to journalists at the SEJ conference in Arizona. Credit: Isabella Figueroa Nogueira

There are many reasons for the decline in the number of prairie dogs, like hunting, but one factor stands out from the rest: the bubonic plague, said Emily Renn, a PhD student at Northern Arizona University’s School of Earth and Sustainability

“Throughout Arizona, Gunnison’s prairie dogs declined over 96% across their range,” Renn said.

However, even though they were petitioned for protection under the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the agency determined that listing the prairie dog under the Endangered Species Act was not justified.

Historically, their range was much broader than today, but there still is hope, said Jim Devos, the Mexican wolf coordinator for the Arizona Game and Fish Department.

“We believe that with some of the conservation measures others are implementing, we anticipate if we can get on top of the plague issue, which is the single greatest challenge today, that we can get back to more robust prairie dogs,” said Devos. Continue reading →

By Shealyn Paulis

Shealyn Paulis

This is the 4th in a series of articles about reporting skills by Knight Center students who attended the 2025 Society of Environmental Journalists conference.

Reporters working in or focusing on the Amazon rainforest are forced to take extreme safety measures while doing so. That’s because their coverage threatens industries seeking to exploit  the region’s resources and populations.

At the 2025 conference of the Society of  Environmental Journalists in Tempe, Arizona, this topic was presented by representatives from the nonprofit organization Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism (Abraji); security manager Valeria Oliveira and project coordinator Reinaldo Chaves.

The panel was hosted in two languages, Portuguese and English, and was part of an effort to answer why journalists in certain regions, like the Amazon, are put into such dangerous positions and how those threats are combated in the field.

Attendees were guided through a presentation on how Abraji funds, trains and mentors reporters investigating environmental crimes in the Amazon, leading to eight successful investigations thus far. Their organization advocates transparency and prioritizes journalists’ ability to have creative freedom to deliver the stories they want, but reinforces that physical security is the most important aspect of their work.

Latin America is the most dangerous place in the world to be an environmental journalist, according to a 2022 study by the international organization Committee to Protect Journalists.. The Amazon region is under particular stress, according to Reuters. In the past decade, over 200 incidents against journalists, such as threats, kidnappings and murders, have been documented. Continue reading →