WAMU 88.5 Contributors

Jonathan Wilson

Environment Reporter

Wilson spent five years working as a local television reporter at stations in Indiana and Arkansas. After growing tired of local TV news, he arrived in the WAMU Newsroom in 2008 as volunteer and quickly realized that working as a public radio reporter was his dream job. Luckily, the bosses at WAMU decided not to crush his dreams and gave him a chance. Now he won’t leave.

Wilson is a graduate of Middlebury College, and received his Masters’ from the Medill School of Journalism. He is a native of Arlington, Virginia, and lives there now with his wife and his daughter.


Articles Written by Jonathan Wilson

WAMU 88.5
John Parker knows a lot about biodiversity — he's been studying it for about 20 years, but never like this. Parker is a senior scientist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, and he's standing at the end of one of the six fields that make up the BiodiversiTree experiment, a project that will monitor the ups and downs of thousands of trees over the course of an en...
WAMU 88.5
This week, Metro Connection's Jonathan Wilson sits down with the poet Dan Vera, whose latest collection just took home the Letras Latinas/Red Hen Poetry Prize. The Texas-raised poet is a first generation Cuban-American, and grew up in a heavily Mexican-American community, but he's spent the past 12 years in D.C., and turned his own efforts to get to know the literary history of the ci...
WAMU 88.5
Tomorrow night candidates in Virginia's governor's race will face off in a televised debate, and with just six weeks left before Election Day, Democrat Terry McAuliffe and Republican Ken Cuccinelli sure to try to draw sharp contrasts with one another. One are where those contrasts may come into sharp relief is on environmental and energy policies. From coal to climate chang...
WAMU 88.5
Most people on Smith Island believe that scientists are exaggerating about how dire the danger of seal level rise and storm surges are to the island's future. "When my Dad was younger, they said, 'In 50 years, this place will be gone,'" says 16-year-old Rebekah Kitching. "My dad's 52. It never happened. I mean, I don't think we'll ever wash away — we are washing away a littl...
WAMU 88.5
More information about the 12 victims of the mass shooting at the Navy Yard is emerging now that police have released all of their identities. A family from Annandale, Va., is one of many coming to terms with the loss of a loved one. Authorities informed f...
WAMU 88.5
Chris Parks, 56, sits in a booth at Peaky’s Restaurant in Princess Anne, Md. The warmth he radiates comes with an unmistakable sadness. I ask him about the hint of despair in his voice, and he says it’s simple: He’s a Smith Islander, who isn’t — for the moment — living on Smith Island. “Last October, when Hurricane Sandy hit — this may sound crazy, ...
WAMU 88.5
Sometime in the next few months, the U.S. Forest Service will announce whether it's going to allow hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, within Virginia's George Washington National Forest. It wouldn't be the first national forest to allow fracking, but advocates on both sides of the debate view the looming decision as crucial. The forest service was originally scheduled to del...
WAMU 88.5
In our monthly look at the D.C. literary scene, we'll meet A.X. Ahmad, author of the new thriller "The Caretaker." The novel centers on the story of a former Indian Army Special Forces captain trying to carve out a new life on the island of Martha's Vineyard, when that elite military training suddenly comes in handy. Jonathan Wilson met Ahmad downtown at one of his favorite writing sp...
WAMU 88.5
In just a few days, Dominion Virginia Power must lay out its 15-year plan for providing power to Virginia residents for state leaders. But this week a coalition of environmental groups is calling out the utility for favoring fossil fuels over renewable resources. The coalition, which includes the Sierra Club the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, hired three independent cons...
WAMU 88.5
Maryland's Agriculture Department has withdrawn its request to seek emergency status on proposed regulations on fertilizer use aimed at reducing Chesapeake Bay pollution. The department announced it was pulling back the request just two days before a legislative panel was scheduled to take up the proposal. The department sought emergency status because officials wante...
WAMU 88.5
When Crystal Travis decided to start a family, she chose to use a surrogate — one who lived halfway around the world, in India. Travis says the experience was so positive that she now works to facilitate surrogacy for other families around the world. Jonathan Wilson delves into the choice to use a surrogate, and how that already complicated decision is further intensified when the w...
WAMU 88.5
China is already the leading market for the Virginia's agricultural export — buying approximately $638 million of farm and forest products in 2012. Gov. Bob McDonnell says a Chinese company plans to buy $8 million bushels of soybeans from Perdue Agribusiness over the next year. He says the agreement is the result of meetings during a trade and marketing mission to Asia las...
WAMU 88.5
Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley has named 11 people to serve on a task force that will look for new and different ways to fund local and regional transportation projects. The governor's former chief of staff, Matthew Gallagher, will chair the Local and Regional Transportation Funding Task Force. Gallagher is president of the Goldseker Foundation, a Baltimore grant-making group...
WAMU 88.5
President Obama has made good on a three-year-old promise to use solar power in the White House. Solar panels have begun to be installed on the White House's roof, the first time solar power will be used for a president's living quarters. The work makes good on a nearly three-year-old promise by the Obama administration to have panels on the White House by the spring of 2011...
WAMU 88.5
The pond is at the top of the park service's list for construction upgrades.The District's Department of the Environment says blue-green algae is to blame for killing nearly one thousand fish in a pond on the National Mall. Researchers from the DDOE tested the waters at Constitution Gardens pond this morning as a crew from the National Park Service waded in to clean up the tho...
WAMU 88.5
The Wildlife Center of Virginia has been rehabilitating injured native animals for decades, and for the past 12 years a non-releasable great horned owl has been helping out. Papa G'Ho, as he's known, has acted as a surrogate parent for more than two dozen owlets that have come through the center. Jonathan Wilson gets to know this full-time foster dad and the people who help him do his...
WAMU 88.5
Virginia wines are continuing to sell at a record-breaking pace. Gov. Bob McDonnell says Virginia wineries sold more than 511,000 cases in the fiscal year that ended June 30, eclipsing the record set last year. Export sales jumped more than 74 percent, and McDonnell says new sales to China accounted for a significant portion of those sales. Virginia rece...
WAMU 88.5
Virginia's agriculture industry is extending its reach into Chinese markets. China is already the leading market for the commonwealth's agricultural exports, buying approximately $638 million of farm and forest product in 2012. Gov. Bob McDonnell says a Chinese company plans to buy 8 million bushels of soybeans from Perdue Agribusiness over the next year. McDon...
WAMU 88.5
A giant northern snakehead snagged by a Spotsylvania County plumber is being hailed as a world record. The 17-pound, six-ounce monster was hauled in by 27-year-old Caleb Newton in Aquia Creek on June 1. The International Game Fish Association has confirmed the record catch. It beat a 17-pound, four-ounce snakehead caught in Japan in 2004. The International Game Fi...
WAMU 88.5
There's been a dramatic increase in the number of dolphin corpses washing ashore on Virginia beaches, and federal scientists are trying to find out why. Most years, about 65 dead dolphins are found in the surf. Marine biologists say dolphin strandings historically peak in May and June. In July, however, 44 dolphins were found dead, pushing the yearly total past the century mar...