Three Seattle Times journalists were named Pulitzer Prize finalists Monday for their work revealing the shortcomings of Washington’s salmon recovery program.
Reporters Mike Reicher and Lynda Mapes and graphic artist Fiona Martin received the prestigious nod in the Local Reporting category for The Times’ Tunnel Vision series, which showed that much of the work behind the state’s multibillion-dollar program may not help the salmon and treaty rights it’s meant to protect.
Stories in the series included why Washington was demolishing a 60-year-old family auto shop and looking to raze a Port Angeles motel to dig out the highway culvert underneath. Not only did the series expose how the state spent billions on work that may never help fish, as salmon continue to languish under human expansion and climate change, but it also showed how Washington shortchanged the treaty fishing rights of 21 Native American tribes.
The investigation found that for every barrier Washington fixes, nine others upstream and two downstream either partially or fully block fish migration.
TUNNEL VISION:
Inside Washington’s largest salmon program
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Reicher, an investigative reporter at The Times since 2020, and Mapes, an environment reporter at the paper since 1997, spent months building sources within tribes, consulting scientists and obtaining public records and data sets. Martin, a graphic artist and science illustrator for The Times since 2022, brought the complexities of culvert designs and salmon recovery efforts to life for readers.
The series led to high-level discussions about renegotiating a federal injunction requiring Washington to build its culverts so they’re passable for salmon.
Representatives from the state and tribal nations are expected to begin mediation over the program’s schedule and scope, maybe as soon as this month. And lawmakers have approved an additional $1.1 billion for court-ordered Department of Transportation culvert replacement projects, bringing the program’s roughly two-decade total to $5.2 billion.
Times Executive Editor Michele Matassa Flores celebrated the Pulitzer nod.
“This work exposed the true costs and enormous challenges of the state’s well-intentioned salmon restoration efforts,” she said. “As a result, taxpayers are better informed, lawmakers have revisited their spending, and leaders from the state and tribal nations are entering mediation over a better approach.
“Deep local reporting carries great power, and we’re honored to have our coverage recognized by the Pulitzer Board,” she added.
A team from The Baltimore Banner and The New York Times won the Local Reporting Pulitzer for a series about Baltimore’s fentanyl crisis. The Seattle Times journalists were one of two teams named as finalists. The second team consisted of journalists from the San Francisco Chronicle and the University of California’s Berkeley Investigative Reporting Program.
The Times’ Tunnel Vision series was part of a partnership between the paper’s Watchdog team and Climate Lab, which launched early last year.
The Times’ most recent Pulitzer win came in 2020 for yearlong coverage by Dominic Gates, Steve Miletich, Mike Baker and Lewis Kamb of two deadly crashes of Boeing’s 737 MAX jet.
