Emmett Fitzgerald is a reporter and producer based in the Bay Area. He’s currently working for Living on Earth, and focuses on the relationship between humans and the natural world. Fitzgerald has reported on threats to wild salmon in southeast Alaska, a sinkhole disaster in Louisiana and the impacts of light pollution in National Parks.
In 2015 he traveled to Paris to cover the UN climate change conference, and thinks a lot about how to talk about climate change in ways people can engage with. His favorite saxophone is the tenor saxophone.
As the climate changes and oceans rise, seaside communities are contemplating how to deal with it. In San Francisco, one idea is to bring back wetlands that were paved over decades ago. Next week, voters will be asked to pay for it.
In Vermont, white nose syndrome is endangering the lives of bats. But landowners are being called on — and given training how — to help save the ones that are left.
Murres live most of their lives at sea, but lately they've been coming ashore — and not doing well. They're starving, and while scientists rush to save them, they don't know why it's happening.
Louisiana's swamps are shelters for the cities during floods, and home to incredible biodiversity. But they're also targets for the energy industry, farmers and ranchers and all manner of businesses that would put them to new uses.
A small porpoise in Mexico is being threatened with extinction on two sides. Legal fishing often sweeps up the five-foot creatures, meanwhile illegal poaching of another endangered species is also sweeping up the few remaining animals.
Southeast Alaska comprises a huge portion of the US seafood industry — as much as 50 percent. So locals are extremely nervous as British Columbia expands its mining industry, on the upstream portions of those same Alaskan rivers.
Bycatch is an economic and environmental problem for commercial fishing. Large trawlers often scoop up sea-life other than the species they're targeting, and if theres too much bycatch fishermen sometimes have to dump their catch. But now Oregon shrimp fishermen are eliminating the by-catch of an important smelt species by lighting up their nets with LEDs.
Wrangell, Alaska is a small, isolated town at the mouth of the mighty Stikine River and a former a timber capital. But since the saw mills shut down in the 90s, the small town has reinvented itself as a tourist destination and a commercial fishing hub. Since both of these industries are dependent on the Stikine, some locals worry that a mining development upriver could put the whole towns livelihood at risk.
With many untouched wild rivers and sensible fishing regulations, Alaska has some of the healthiest salmon fisheries in the world. But as Emmett FitzGerald reports, new gold and copper mines upstream in Canada have the fishing community in Southeast Alaska very concerned about what toxins could be released into the rivers.
In the first of Living on Earths three-part series on Alaskan River Riches, reporter Emmett FitzGerald wades through a small stream near Juneau for a lesson in casting and salmon science from a fly-fisherman with a conservation ethic.
Maya Lins Sound Ringa large, wooden sculpture installed at Cornells Lab of Ornithologyplays the sounds of species and habitats that are on their way to silence. Emmett Fitzgerald talks to John Fitzpatrick, Director of the Lab, about the structure and the significance of these endangered soundscapes.