Upcoming Event: Uncovering a Little-Known Agency's Toll on Wildlife

Poster for the Knight-Risser Prize Symposium, to be held at Stanford on February 5.

Amid the national debate about the National Security Agency's aggressive surveillance measures, and as the federal government continues to crack down on media leaks by public employees, a recent series by Tom Knudson in the Sacramento Bee raises a complementary question: how can reporters keep government transparent and accountable?

Knudson's series, "A Killing Agency," focuses on a little-known part of the Department of Agriculture called Wildlife Services. Founded during the first World War to help protect farmers and ranchers from wolves, Wildlife Services' mandate now includes trapping and killing animals that pose a threat to agriculture, transportation and the environment. Since 2000 alone, the agency has killed millions of animals, from hundreds of species, and all too often its indiscriminate use of traps and poisons has killed endangered species like wolverines and bald eagles, as well as house pets.

"A Killing Agency" was recognized by the judges of the Knight-Risser Prize for Western Environmental Journalism as the finest story of 2013. Based on dozens of interviews and many Freedom of Information Act requests, Knudson compiled an exhaustive record of an agency driven to extremes. 

To learn more about how Tom Knudson got the story, and to be part of a larger discussion of the future of government accountability reporting, please join us for the Knight-Risser Prize Symposium at Stanford University on Wednesday, February 5 at 4:15pm. We'll honor the Sacramento Bee's report and hold a panel discussion with a group of educators and journalists. The panel will be followed by a reception. Attendees are welcome to register on the symposium event page, and are asked to please RSVP by January 28.

The Knight-Risser Prize and Symposium are jointly administered by the Bill Lane Center for the American West and the John. S Knight Journalism Fellowships at Stanford.

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