The Knight-Risser Prize
for Western Environmental Journalism
The Knight-Risser Prize and Symposium are being reimagined to better encourage coverage of important environmental issues affecting the West. Please follow @JSKstanford on Twitter for more information and announcements.
2008winner
Lewis Kamb

2010 Winner of the Knight-Risser Prize for Western Environmental Journalism

“Chain Saw Scouting”
Lewis Kamb
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer

The three-part series headed by Kamb reveals that Boy Scout councils across America–whose mandate is to preserve and protect the environment–have logged or sold forestland, some of it bequeathed to them for recreational purposes, to raise cash. The national investigation by Hearst Newspapers was published simultaneously in five newspapers in early 2009. It involved four years of reporting, 100 interviews and 200 public records requests.

Special Recognition
“Troubled Teens”
Dawn Stover, Conservation Magazine

Stover examines the decline and the demographics of the West’s cougar population, which is increasingly running into conflict with human populations. Heavy hunting has unbalanced the age structure of cougar “societies,” reducing the number of elder males and increasing the number of young males more likely to cause trouble.

Special Recognition
“Wind Resistance”
Jonathan Thompson, High Country News
Wind Resistance
The Messy Mix of Energy and Sage Grouse
Battle for the Core of Wyoming

Thompson explores the political upheaval aroused by a rush to wind power in Wyoming, a big producer of gas and oil and nearly half the coal used in the United States. Energy producers have lined up with traditional foes to stop the spread of wind turbines. They’re worried about property values, environmentalists about a possibly endangered bird. And they’re at odds with longtime allies: cash-strapped ranchers sitting on windswept lands.

 


WINNERS OF THE KNIGHT-RISSER PRIZE
2017
Hell and High Water
Texas Tribune, ProPublica
2016
Pumped Dry
The Desert Sun and USA Today
2015
Big Oil, Bad Air
CPI, InsideClimate News, The Weather Channel
2014
Sea Change
The Seattle Times
2013
The Killing Agency
The Sacramento Bee
2012
Perilous Passages
High Country News
2011
Dry Times
5280 Magazine
2010
Chain Saw Scouting
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
2009
Logging and Landslides:
What Went Wrong?
The Seattle Times
2008
Climate Change Hits Home
San Antonio Express-News
2007
Blighted Homeland
The Los Angeles Times
2006
Squeezing Water from a Stone
High Country News