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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.

  • The fact that a second contaminant in West Virginia's drinking water eluded detection for nearly two weeks — despite intense testing of the water — reveals an important truth about how companies test drinking water: In most cases, they only find the contaminants they're looking for.
  • The rare northern spotted owl species faces habitat loss and, now, intruding barred owls. A biologist, and the federal government, have made a difficult decision — killing one owl to ward off the extinction of another.
  • At the time of the accident, the CDC didn't have a standard for how much of the coal-cleaning chemical is safe in drinking water. So the agency had to come up with one.
  • Interior Secretary Sally Jewell has a goal of putting 100,000 young people and veterans to work on the federal lands she oversees before the end of the Obama administration. These are basically public service jobs that don't pay a lot. But still, it's not an easy goal to reach during times of tight budgets, so that's why she's gone to corporate America to try to raise money.
  • Global warming is pushing species like the polar bear to the brink of extinction. It's not a typical conservation problem, so one government biologist discovered the best way he could help save the great white bears was to quit his job.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.