- Hosting over 50 interns to date, Mongabay’s Environmental Journalism Internship program has gained and nurtured many talented writers from around the world.
- To highlight and reward our interns’ outstanding work, we have offered another end-of-the-year article award.
- Mongabay will start accepting applications for the upcoming six-month summer term in April 2018.
Hosting over 50 interns to date, Mongabay’s Environmental Journalism Internship program has gained and nurtured many talented writers from around the world. The program offers unique sessions to meet with editors, cover fascinating stories and talk to the leading scientists in the field, all within a flexible working environment. Over the past six years, our interns have made an invaluable contribution to the cause of environmental journalism through their hundreds of published articles.
“The internship went over a long enough period that I really felt myself grow as a journalist, researcher and writer,” says Shayna Wilson, a former intern. “It taught me valuable skills that helped me find work afterwards — communication, organization and deadline management, just to name a few. I cannot reiterate enough how much I appreciated this opportunity!”
“It provides a rare and unique opportunity for early career and environmental enthusiasts to personally contribute to publicizing conservation issues,” says Ariel Mark, another former intern. “I believe the internship program is a stepping stone for many young recent graduates finding their way along on the career path.”
To highlight and reward our interns’ outstanding work, we have offered another end-of-the-year article award. Each intern was invited to submit what they viewed as their most impactful piece, and Mongabay staff members, who did not work on the articles, selected the best pieces from the list.
Mongabay is happy to ring in the New Year by announcing the four best intern articles of the year.
Top two awards for work in 2017
Kayla Walsh took on the difficult story of the vanishing Irrawaddy dolphins that not long ago were known to help local fishermen with their catches in remote Myanmar. Today, the dolphin population is nearly gone, and the fishermen are struggling to survive as the modern world closes in on them. For this complex story of wildlife, people and governments, Walsh worked with a local reporter to secure interviews with the fishermen on the front line as they try to find an way out through ecotourism.
Jack Elliot Marley wrote a piece on the news that Bangladesh was expanding its wildlife sanctuary in the Sundarbans, the world’s largest mangrove forest. While the story could have ended there, Marley looked deeper into how the expanded protected area would crowd out the already vulnerable communities who depend on the Sundarbans for their livelihoods. Looming over all of this is a plan by the government to build coal-fired power plants on the edge of the Sundarbans, which activists and conservationists argue will destroy the already imperiled ecosystem, rendering the protected area little more than a paper park.
Runner-up awards for work prior to 2017
Christina Selby wrote an easily digestible article about an incredibly complex scientific finding with global implications: how trees, even those of different species, share their carbon. Her reporting won our historical intern article prize.
The other past intern honored for her work is now a Mongabay contributor. Claire Salisbury also tackled a notoriously complex science story — ocean acidification — with distinguished finesse.
Thank you to all the interns who submitted entries for this award and to everyone who has been a part of Mongabay’s internship program. Mongabay will start accepting applications for the upcoming six-month summer term in April 2018.