Ashley Ahearn
Year started with KUOW: 2011
Ashley Ahearn is KUOW’s award-winning environment reporter and the host of a new national podcast on the environment, terrestrial. Each episode explores the choices we make in a world we have changed.
Ashley has been covering the environment for NPR and member stations for more than a decade and you've probably heard her stories on Morning Edition, Marketplace, All Things Considered, The World and other national shows, as well as right here on KUOW in Seattle.
She has a masters in science journalism from the Annenberg School at the University of Southern California. In her spare time she rides motorcycles and snowboards and hikes in the Olympic and Cascade mountains with her husband and her ridiculously spoiled labradoodle.
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In the past two years, more than 800,000 acres in northern Nevada have burned. The traditional sagebrush rangeland is being replaced by cheatgrass that burns hotter and more frequently.
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Australia is no stranger to periods of extreme heat and drought. But after years with little rain, many farmers in the country's southeast are simply giving up.
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A proposed fee of $15 per ton of carbon emissions in Washington state has several exemptions for large emitters, and has rural voters afraid they'll end up paying.
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The National Park Service is transporting hundreds of wild mountain goats from Olympic National Park to the North Cascades in Washington state.
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In a blow to the coal industry, a new terminal in the Pacific Northwest was denied approval after opposition from environmental groups and a debate between local Native American tribes.
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As international leaders convene in Paris to talk about solutions for climate change, one tribe on the Washington coast reluctantly plans its retreat from the encroaching Pacific Ocean.
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Over 1,600 acres of old-growth rainforest have burned in Washington's Olympic National Park. As Ashley Ahearn of KUOW reports, the wildfire is expected to persist through the rest of the summer.
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The usually-snowy peaks of Olympic National Park are a deep green. That means less snowmelt in rivers that provide water for farmland, and spawning grounds for more than a million fish.
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The Forest Service is set to open more than 80,000 acres for clean, renewable geothermal power in Washington state. But environmentalists are worried about damage to streams and old-growth forests.
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Snow levels are at record lows for Washington and Oregon. That could create problems later on in the dry season when there's no more snow to feed rivers that depend on snowmelt.