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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Critics say the state's mitigation plan falls far short of what's needed to protect this former tourist mecca from the impact of the coming water transfer. -
Gorilla experts with the Wildlife Conservation Society say they've made a spectacular find in the forests of the Republic of Congo: 125,000 previously undiscovered western lowland gorillas. The animals are critically endangered. -
The White House is weighing what could become the biggest conservation program in U.S. history. The initiative would block vast stretches of U.S. territorial waters from fishing and oil exploration, while giving President Bush a historic "blue legacy."
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The Bush administration announces on Wednesday that the polar bear will be protected as a threatened species because of the decline in Arctic sea ice from global warming. It's the first time that the Endangered Species Act has been used to protect a species threatened by the impact of climate change.
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The Santa Ana winds driving California's wildfires are fabled. Some call them the Santa Anas and others call them the devil's breath. While they make the winters warm and pleasant by blowing the worst air pollution out to sea, they can also spawn massive infernos.
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Scientists have released an updated list of the world's most endangered plants and animals. It's called the Red List and among other things, it shows that gorillas, Asian crocodiles and coral reefs are in a lot of trouble.
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Scientists have released an updated list of the world's most endangered plants and animals. It's called the Red List and among other things, it shows that gorillas, Asian crocodiles and coral reefs are in a lot of trouble.
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The saying "Don't let the bedbugs bite" might have seemed like a thing of the past. The little blood-sucking critters were mostly eradicated in the 1940s, but they seem to be staging a creepy return, causing great discomfort among sleepers across the country.
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Satellite mapping has uncovered in Darfur a buried lakebed the size of Massachusetts. Scientists think its water may have seeped into a reservoir underneath it. If that's the case, it could help ease fighting in one of the driest places on Earth. -
Scientists have found that female butterflies adapt to male-killing bacteria by becoming more promiscuous, while surviving males become exhausted and put less effort into mating.
