Elizabeth Shogren
Elizabeth Shogren is an NPR News Science Desk correspondent focused on covering environment and energy issues and news.
Since she came to NPR in 2005, Shogren's reporting has covered everything from the damage caused by the BP oil spill on the ecology of the Gulf Coast, to the persistence of industrial toxic air pollution as seen by the legacy of Tonawanda Coke near Buffalo, to the impact of climate change on American icons like grizzly bears.
Prior to NPR, Shogren spent 14 years as a reporter on a variety of beats at The Los Angeles Times, including four years reporting on environmental issues in Washington, D.C., and across the country. While working from the paper's Washington bureau, from 1993-2000, Shogren covered the White House, Congress, social policy, money and politics, and presidential campaigns. During that time, Shogren was given the opportunity to travel abroad on short-term foreign reporting assignments, including the Kosovo crisis in 1999, the Bosnian war in 1996, and Russian elections in 1993 and 1996. Before joining the Washington bureau, Shogren was based in Moscow where she covered the breakup of the Soviet Union and the rise of democracy in Russia for the newspaper.
Beginning in 1988, Shogren worked as a freelance reporter based in Moscow, publishing in a variety of newspapers and magazines, including Newsweek, The Dallas Morning News, the San Francisco Chronicle, and The Washington Post. During that time, she covered the fall of the Berlin Wall and the peaceful revolution in Prague.
Shogren's career in journalism began in the wire services. She worked for the Associated Press in Chicago and at United Press International in Albany, NY.
Throughout Shogren's career she has received numerous awards and honors including as a finalist for the 2011 Goldsmith Prize for investigative reporting, the National Wildlife Federation National Conservation Achievement Award, the Meade Prize for coverage of air pollution and she was an IRE finalist. She is a member of Sigma Delta Chi and the Society of Professional Journalist.
After earning a Bachelor of Arts in Russian studies at the University of Virginia, Shogren went on to receive a Master of Science in journalism from Columbia University.
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Biologists armed with truck-mounted spotlights, flea spray, and anti-plague vaccine roam the South Dakota grasslands each night, five months a year, as part of a 30-year rescue mission. -
Colorado and California both just proposed new regulations for oil and gas production in their states. Both states have been pushed by environmental concerns to establish rules tougher than federal requirements. If Colorado's proposal goes ahead, it would be the first state in the nation to directly regulate methane. California also says its proposed rule would be the toughest in the nation. It regulates the engineering technique called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.
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The EPA proposed a new standard on Friday for how much biofuel must be mixed into the nation's gasoline. The portion of vehicle fuel that comes from plants has increased dramatically over recent years to about 10 percent. But most of it comes from corn. Congress hoped that, by now, a billion gallons would be coming from advanced biofuels, which have much smaller greenhouse gas footprints. That hasn't happened. But the nascent cellulosic fuel industry says don't count it out. Several plants are on the verge of opening and more will be on the way.
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For most of us, plague is something that maybe we read about in history books. In the 14th Century, it wiped out half of Europe's population. But the bacteria is busy killing wildlife now in the American West. By studying small mammals scientists have learned that plague is far more pervasive a killer than anyone thought.
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The federal government finally has a plan for winters at Yellowstone National Park that both fans and foes of snowmobiles say they can live with. Within two years, only the cleanest and quietest of the vehicles will be allowed inside the park. -
The Supreme Court has agreed to review an Obama administration policy that requires new power plants and other big polluting facilities to apply for permits to emit greenhouse gases. Industry groups argue that getting these permits causes delays in big projects that could help revive the economy. -
Under the proposal from the Environmental Protection Agency, new plants that run on coal would be permitted to emit only about half as much carbon dioxide as the average coal plant puts into the air today. Emissions from the electricity industry are already declining as utilities turn to natural gas and wind farms. -
The carvings etched into limestone boulders near Pyramid Lake in western Nevada show that the early North Americans were surprisingly creative artists. The carvings, which are at least 10,000 years old, are abstract, geometric designs including shapes that look like diamonds and trees. -
The electricity system is experiencing growing pains as the grid is beginning to rely on an increasing amount of renewable, particularly unpredictable sources of power like wind farms and solar panels. So grid operators are turning to individual customers to beef up redundancy and capacity. -
The environmental agency has proposed permits that would allow oil companies to continue releasing contaminated wastewater onto the Wind River Reservation in central Wyoming. NPR found last year that the EPA has been allowing oil companies to send so much wastewater onto dry land that it was creating raging streams.
