Former Post Register staffer wins prestigious environmental reporting award

Brandon Loomis

Former Post Register reporter Brandon Loomis is one of a three-person team from The Salt Lake Tribune to be awarded the 2012 Grantham Prize for Excellence in Reporting on the Environment. 

Loomis, Rick Egan and Dave Noyce will receive a total of $75,000 for "Our Dying Forests," a series examining the link between climate change and the spread of beetles that are destroying millions of acres of forests in the American West.

U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse named winners at the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation's Leadership Awards Dinner on June 5, in conjunction with Capitol Hill Ocean Week, the premier ocean conference in our nation's capital. Sunshine Menezes, executive director of Metcalf Institute for Marine & Environmental Reporting, which administers the prize, introduced the winners to the public at a news conferenceat the National Press Club.

"I'm thrilled to have such recognition for a project we knew from the start was bigger than Utah or the Rocky Mountains," he said. "I hope reporters everywhere will pick up where we left off to investigate and explain what's happening where they live."

The Grantham Jury praised the Tribune team's methodical and measured reporting. "Experts have long been aware of the dangers implicit in the wholesale disappearance of ancient forests," said Grantham Prize Juror Robert Semple, Jr. of The New York Times. "Brandon Loomis' incredible reporting has now deftly alerted a wider public to this important issue."

Here is a link to the series: http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/54154633-78/dyingforests-forests-beetles-trees.html.csp