John M. Collier Award for Forest History Journalism

John M. Collier (d. 1987) was a New Orleans journalist skilled in many areas of communication, including advertising and sales promotion and public, government, and media relations. He was a working scholar and a prolific writer of articles and special features for forest industry press publications. Established to honor the memory of Collier, the Forest History Society's (FHS) John M. Collier Award encourages excellence in journalism that treats forest and conservation history.

Collier Award Details

From its establishment in 1987 through the year 2002, the Collier Award annually recognized the author of the best article or series of articles on forest and conservation history published in newspapers, trade press publications, or general circulation magazines. In the year 2002 FHS redesigned the award to better reach the growing number of journalists writing about environmental topics.

Today the Collier Award is offered annually and recognizes contributions to forest history that are published in newspapers, trade journals, and other journalistic media. The award pays expenses for a visit to the Forest History Society Library and Archives in Durham, North Carolina, and participation in an Institutes for Journalism in Natural Resources (IJNR) expedition. The award is currently open to any newspaper or general circulation magazine, professional, or freelance journalist in North America. Apply for an IJNR expedition (http://www.ijnr.org) and you are automatically considered for the Award.

Recent Recipients

2006 Collier Award
Jeffrey Barnard from Grants Pass, Oregon is the southern Oregon correspondent for the Associated Press, having worked for the AP since 1983. He is responsible for stories and photos of general interest in southern Oregon, with a particular focus on the environment. He was named first AP state environmental writer, 2003. His longstanding areas of coverage include salmon restoration, forests management, wildfire, Klamath Basin water, and commercial fishing.

2005 Collier Award
Michelle Nijhuis is a contributing editor of the environmental journal High Country News and a correspondent for Orion, and her work has appeared in publications including Smithsonian, Salon.com, The Christian Science Monitor, The San Francisco Chronicle, Mother Jones, Sierra, Audubon, and the anthology Best American Science Writing. She wrote an engaging and informative history of dendrochronology (tree-ring research) for High Country News (Jan. 24, 2005).

2004 Collier Award
Zachary Coile, a Washington correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle, won the 2004 Collier Award. Coile regularly pursues stories related to natural resource issues and has recently been writing about forest thinning practices and mill operations in the Tongass National Forest of Alaska--work that directly resulted from his FHS-sponsored attendance at the IJNR Midnight Sun Institute held in Alaska in July 2003. FHS congratulates him for demonstrating a serious interest in forest and conservation issues and for showing outstanding professional growth in journalism.

2003 Collier Award
The 2003 Collier Award went to Isak Howell, a staff writer for the Roanoke Times (Roanoke, Virginia) who covers news and features about a local municipal government while also pursuing stories about environmental and natural resource issues. Howell works with his editors to ensure the newspaper maintains cohesive natural resource coverage. He has authored news stories on such topics as water quality and management, forest planning on the Jefferson National Forest, outbreaks of gypsy moth infestations, and severe drought conditions in western Virginia. He attended the IJNR Low Country Institute held in 2002.

2002 Collier Award
There was no winner for the year 2002.

2001 Collier Award
Sherry Devlin won the 2001 Collier Award for her article “The Big Burn of 1910,” which ran in four parts on August 20-22, 2000 in the Missoulian newspaper in Missoula, Montana.