To all applicants for the 2007 Middlebury College Fellowships in Environmental Journalism:
Okay, this was hard. We got almost 200 applications for our 10 slots for the Middlebury Fellowship. 150 of them were more than good enough — that is, we could have filled the program 15 times over.
What’s worse, most of those 150 stories were things we really wanted to read or to hear — and they contrasted painfully with the limited range of stuff that actually makes it into the news. The committee that did the choosing really struggled — it was difficult to say no to any of these pitches. Below, you'll find a list of the fellows for 2007 and the stories they'll be covering.
We hope you apply again, and that those of you who did not apply this year will next. Please stay in touch and keep reporting about the health of the planet and its people. We’ll look for your bylines.
— Bill McKibben and Christopher Shaw
The Fellows for 2007
Sasha Chavkin: Effects of El Niño rain fall in the Bolivian Amazon.
Carolyn Kormann: Effects of Andean glacial melting on downstream users.
Phil McKenna: Traditional water management in western China.
Andrew Mombandiyani: Illegal mining and forestry on rural agricultural and wild lands in Zimbabwe.
Emily Peterson ’08: Louisiana’s vanishing wetlands: The country’s next energy crisis.
Shadi Rahimi: Wind farms on Native American reserves.
Heather Smith: Strengthening the honey bee gene pool by breeding with native stock.
Els Van Woert: Arctic grayling and watershed management in the northern Rockies.
Adam Welz: Diminishing returns of clearing South African land to raise crops for biofuel production.
Forrest Wilder: Local corruption in promoting nuclear waste storage in rural Texas.