John Nielsen
John Nielsen covers environmental issues for NPR. His reports air regularly on NPR's award-winning news magazines, All Things Considered, Morning Edition and Weekend Edition. He also prepares documentaries for the NPR/National Geographic Radio Expeditions series, which is heard regularly on Morning Edition. Nielsen also occasionally serves as the substitute host for several NPR News programs.
During his years with NPR, Nielsen has reported on a wide range of topics, including the environmental records of the last three U.S. presidents; changing world population trends; repeated attempts to limit suburban sprawl; socially divisive water shortages in the Middle East; allegations of "toxic racism" in the United States; rhinoceros relocation efforts in the lowland forests of Nepal; and attempts to track and cope with the West Nile virus, toxic algal blooms, environmental problems related to economic globalization, and the causes of global climate change.
Before joining NPR in 1990, Nielsen was a Knight Fellow in the Science Journalism program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prior to that, he worked for the Los Angeles Times, The Orange County Register, and the Salisbury (North Carolina) Evening Post.
Nielsen's Condor: To the Brink and Back--The Life and Times of One Giant Bird (HarperCollins) was published in 2006 and is out in paperback in March 2007. The book focuses on the long-running fight to save the California condor, a giant rare vulture that used to be common near his childhood home, the tiny town of Piru, California.
Nielsen's freelance work has been published in a variety of newspapers and magazines. He has lectured at the University of Utah, Princeton University, and Yale University. In 2005 he was awarded the Science Journalism Award for Excellence in Radio Reporting by the American Association fo the Advnacement of Science.
He is a graduate of Stanford University, where he studied Shakespeare. Nielsen has three children and lives in Washington, DC.
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Some 300 million monarch butterflies spread all over North America will soon converge on small forests in the mountains of Mexico. This year, the butterflies have unusual company -- Francisco Gutierrez. He plans to follow the monarchs' migration in a 33-foot wide utralight airplane.
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Time is running out to save the endangered northern right whale. But researchers continue to comb the seas in search of the elusive mammal, hoping to find a way to prevent its extinction.
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Two teams of scientists, working more than 230 miles apart, have discovered the first new monkey species in Africa in 20 years. The highland mangabey is a brown, furry creature with a distinctive cry. Fewer than 1,000 are believed to exist.
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Efforts to restore Iraqi marshlands destroyed by Saddam Hussein are off to an uneven but promising start. That's the gist of a report released Saturday on the health of an ecosystem widely thought to be essential to the future of Iraq.
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The Environmental Protection Agency has offered the nation's factory farms a four-year immunity from air pollution laws if they agree to participate in the agency's study of the farms' airborne emissions. Activist groups are calling the plan a delaying tactic.
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A report by the National Research Council says there is still room for improvement at the National Zoo, but concludes the zoo has made strides toward providing better conditions for its animals. Congress asked for this independent review in 2002 when two endangered red pandas died after eating rat poison buried in their enclosure.
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The recent tsunami in the Indian Ocean has left many wondering if such a disaster could happen on the Pacific Coast. In 1964 it did. As NPR's John Nielsen reports, experts can't predict such an event, but a new detection system might help.
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A researcher from South Africa thinks he's found the source of a mysterious fungus that has been killing amphibians since the early 1990s. The chytrid fungus has been linked to huge amphibian die-offs around the world. NPR's John Nielsen reports.
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The recent meeting in Thailand on endangered species receives mixed reviews as it closes. U.S. delegates proclaimed the conference a success. But critics call the treaty -- the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species -- a "shark without teeth." They say poachers are bolder and better armed than ever, and many species, like forest elephants, are on the road to extinction. NPR's John Nielsen reports.
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The U.N. group that monitors wildlife trade votes to protect the great white shark as an endangered species. Sales of shark teeth and jaws -- which can fetch tens of thousands of dollars -- will be closely monitored, and may be banned if great white numbers keep fading. NPR's John Nielsen reports.