Bio

Tara Lohan has been working as an environmental journalist and editor for more than 15 years. Her work has been published by the Nation, the American Prospect, Salon, High Country News, Grist, Adventure Journal, The Revelator, and others. She is the editor of two books on the global water crisis and is currently writing a book about dam removals (Island Press). 

You can read some selected stories here. Or for more stories, check out Tara's author pages at The Revelator, Water Deeply, the Nation, and the American Prospect. You can also see special reporting projects like Toxic Taps and Faces of Fracking.

More About Tara

Twenty years ago I slept beside a river in the Green Mountains. The next morning I woke up and began writing about water. I have followed its meandering course ever since. It took me through an undergraduate degree at Middlebury College in environmental studies and nonfiction writing, and then a graduate degree in narrative nonfiction from the University of Oregon's School of Journalism. It's also a journey that led me to the Capitol, the desert Southwest, the soggy Northwest, and then to settle atop a hill in San Francisco in 2006.  

From that perch I joined AlterNet, a leading online news magazine, as a managing (and then senior) editor. Over the course of seven years at AlterNet, I led our coverage of climate, water, energy, and food issues, composing more than 250 stories read by more than 8 million people. In that time I edited two books on the global water crisis. They have beautiful photographs and essays from some of my favorite writers like Barbara Kingsolver and Bill McKibben (you can find the most recent one, Water Matters, here). 

After spending years writing about fracking, mountaintop removal coal mining, tars sands mining, and other kinds of fossil fuel extraction, I wanted to connect the dots between our energy choices and understand their varying economic and environmental impacts. 

So in the summer of 2013, along with my partner, I launched Hitting Home, a multimedia journalism project to document how communities (human and nonhuman) are being impacted. For three months, pulling a Cricket trailer and accompanied by our dog Buffalo Bill Cody, we toured the U.S. visiting coal mines, silica sand mines, tar sand mines, gaslands, pipeline paths, oil fields, and those living beside it all. 

When I got home, I wanted to better understand how the same scenarios were playing out in my home state of California. In 2014 in a project for CEL Climate Lab I teamed up with photographer Sarah Craig and launched a year-long multimedia project, Faces of Fracking, profiling those on the front lines of oil and gas development in California.

Since then, I have focused on continuing to tell stories that help us better understand the world we live in, the impacts of our choices, and the new ideas that are driving resilience. My writing often focuses on the intersection of climate, water, biodiversity, and energy.

For more than two years I served as managing editor for Water Deeply, part of News Deeply, where I wrote and edited stories about water in the American West, covering everything from innovative technology and collaborations, to wildfires and drought. I also worked as deputy editor of The Revelator, a digital platform of environmental news and ideas published by the Center for Biological Diversity.

I’ve recently embarked on a new project: a book about my favorite topic — dam removals.

When I'm not writing, I'm usually adventuring near my home in Central Oregon, coveting camper vans, and plotting ascents.