Seattle Times’ Lynda Mapes named 2025 Bill Lane Center Western Media Fellow
The Bill Lane Center for the American West is proud to announce that Lynda Mapes, an environmental reporter at the Seattle Times since 1997, has been selected as the 2025 Western Media Fellow. Mapes’ distinguished career, alongside her well-rounded and sweeping proposal exploring the Columbia River’s impact on the regional economy and environment, made her stand out among a field of highly accomplished candidates.
This year’s fellowship process was among the most competitive in the Bill Lane Center’s history, with applicants from across the West submitting projects addressing salient challenges facing the region today. Criteria for selection focused mainly on importance and originality, with special attention paid to proposals that intersected with ongoing Lane Center research or reflected the breadth of communities and stakeholders making up the region.
In fact, it was the “roundedness” of Mapes’ proposal – her recognition of the Columbia River system’s influence on tribes, fish, wildlife, energy producers and consumers, and others – that signaled how far-reaching and impactful her reporting could be. Her project highlights an urgent topic: the Columbia River’s current and future role in the ecological and economic health of the Columbia Basin. With negotiations underway for the Columbia River Treaty and decisions about energy development on the table, Mapes’ work seeks to uncover the choices that will shape the basin for generations to come. She plans to examine the complex stakes — ecologically, economically, and culturally — at play in the river’s future. Her investigation will look at potential avenues for innovation, including alternative energy development, modernization of transport that now depends on the river, and rethinking the possibilities for dam removal and improved fish passage.
“Lynda intends to look at all the factors that have affected — and will affect — the Columbia River system and the communities, economies, and tribal cultures that depend on the river's muscles and its salmon runs,” said Felicity Barringer, writer in residence at the Bill Lane Center and administrator of the fellowship. “I'm not sure how anyone can wrestle with this panoply of interlinked issues, but if anyone can, it's Lynda Mapes. I know that she will be looking in every corner to understand the river's role now and in the future.”
This isn’t Mapes’ first deep dive into the story of the Columbia. In 1996, while at The Spokesman-Review, she produced award-winning reporting on the failure of Columbia River salmon recovery efforts. Her work exposed that despite $1 billion invested in recovery efforts, little had changed due to entrenched political reluctance to challenge the status quo. Nearly 30 years and $9 billion later, that status quo persists, with even more salmon runs now on the endangered species list.
Lynda Mapes brings a well-earned reputation for investigative depth and a commitment to public service journalism. The Bill Lane Center is honored to support her work illuminating the critical decisions facing the Columbia River Basin today and the opportunities to forge a sustainable future. We look forward to the insights her project will unveil about this iconic river and its enduring significance in the West.
