Pulitzer Center Update

This Week: Through a Changing Climate

The town of Inuvik, from the Mackenzie River. Image courtesy of Brian Castner. Canada, 2016.

Passage Through a Changing Climate
Brian Castner

Grantee Brian Castner has just finished paddling the 1,125-mile length of Canada’s Mackenzie River, from the Great Slave Lake to the Arctic Ocean. The Mackenzie, the second longest river in North America, is “a massive icebox that moderates weather across the continent.” In his fascinating, multi-part series, Brian writes about some of the most worrisome climate change challenges on our continent: the melting glaciers of British Columbia, thawing permafrost, wildfire, flood and dwindling caribou herds. And amidst the oil platforms and new roads that push deeper into the Canadian wilderness, indigenous people attempt to hunt, fish, and maintain their traditional way of life.

The Most Dangerous Journey
Jason Motlagh

You can watch an even more arduous journey undertaken by grantee Jason Motlagh, who crosses the Darien Gap, a 10,000-square-mile rectangle of swamp and mountains between Colombia and Panama. The Gap has become a favored but treacherous route for migrants trying to reach the U.S.

Germany's Hidden Crime Wave
Ben Mauk

Grantee Ben Mauk looks at the growing wave of violence against refugees in Germany—more than 1,000 incidents last year: “Individually, the crimes don’t get much attention in the media outside the local papers and are rarely discussed for what they are: mob violence, working slowly across great distances.”