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The Internews Earth Journalism Network’s (EJN) Biodiversity Media Initiative has given out a series of new grants to both organizations and individual journalists, and selected a new round of journalist Fellows to attend this year’s 28th International Congress for Conservation Biology.
Now in its second year, the biodiversity media program run by Internews’ Earth Journalism Network, with support from the Arcadia Fund, is boosting media coverage of biodiversity and conservation by strengthening networks of journalists, supporting story production and organizing fellowships to key conferences.
In February, EJN awarded organizational grants to strengthen networks of journalists who report on biodiversity issues in Indonesia, Ecuador and Guinea-Bissau. In March, we awarded reporting grants to journalists in Colombia, India, Russia, the Solomon Islands, Uganda and Vietnam. In the coming months, they will produce in-depth stories on previously untold threats to biodiversity or new approaches to conservation. Story topics include human-wildlife conflict, community-based conservation, invasive species and benefit-sharing related to access to biological resources.
And planning is now underway for our next Biodiversity Media Fellowship program, which will take journalists to the 28th International Congress for Conservation Biology (ICCB), organized by the Society of Conservation Biologists, in Cartagena, Colombia. From the more than 130 journalists who applied for the Fellowships, EJN has selected 10 Fellows from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and one each from Europe and United States.
The ICCB Fellows are:
- Fabiola Ortiz, Brazil - O Eco
- Ivan Carrillo, Mexico - National Geographic Latin America
- Emiliano Rodriguez, Mexico - Emeequis
- Shahzada Irfan Ahmed, Pakistan - The News on Sunday
- Vishal Gulati, India - Indo-Asian News Service (IANS)
- Yan Wang, China - NewsChina Magazine
- Hans Nicholas Jong, Indonesia - The Jakarta Post
- Tunicia Phillips, South Africa - Kaya FM
- Kata Karath, UK - New Scientist
- Christopher Solomon, US - Outside Magazine
They will spend five days at the congress, developing sources and story ideas, networking with other journalists, and reporting on news from conservation organisations, governments and researchers.
As we look forward to implementing this year’s activities we would also like to applaud some of last year’s grantees. In January, Mongabay.com announced that three reports Bolivian journalist Eduardo Franco Berton produced with EJN’s support were among the top rainforest stories of 2016. And in May, the prestigious the MIT Knight Science Journalism program accepted our 2016 story grantee from Nigeria, Kolawole Talabi, for the forthcoming academic year. Congratulations to both!
