Nate Rott explores the ethical dilemmas of covering the natural world

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Nate Rott, an NPR science correspondent, says his beat is broader than climate coverage and is instead centered on how the natural world connects to human life. In a Reporter’s Notebook conversation with NPR host Adrian Florido, Rott described his work as reporting on “the natural world and humanity’s relationship to it,” and said he believes climate and biodiversity issues overlap in ways that still leave biodiversity under-covered.

Rott told Florido that, in his view, climate solutions cannot be separated from efforts to slow biodiversity loss. “Like, you can’t solve climate change without solving biodiversity, the loss of nature and vice versa,” he said, adding that this leads him to “carve out a role” focused on nature’s connections to climate, “creepy crawlies,” and other animals people share the planet with. Florido said many of Rott’s reports involve how scientists and others work to save species facing extinction.

On the question of what reporting in the field looks like, Florido asked Rott about whether he ever has second thoughts about exposing himself to the elements. Rott responded that he enjoys going out to show audiences what is happening “in real time,” including sleeping in tents when needed, and he recalled a case in Alaska where mosquitoes were so thick he could not breathe without ingesting them.

Rott also described how he approaches nature stories as an audio reporter, saying radio offers an opportunity to let environmental sound “tell the story.” He referenced a story in which researchers built a tool intended to monitor ecosystem health by recording river sounds, then using analysis to separate distinct sounds so they can focus on what has changed. “If you put something under the water that can kind of record the natural sound, and then we can kind of piecemeal out,” he said, adding that with recording over 48 hours, people would not need to listen to all of it to understand shifts in what animals are making.

In that river-sound reporting, Rott said the sound data can show when researchers “used to hear this thing a lot” but no longer hear it, and that scientists can then investigate why. He said he learned something personally from the reporting—“I didn’t know fish make sounds”—and he described how the audio approach helps audiences hear aspects of river life they might not otherwise notice.

Rott also said he used sound to show how drought changes landscapes, including in a story about Lake Powell when water levels fell and some people argued for removing the dam. He described walking in areas that were once underwater, saying listeners could hear how the environment sounded as the crew moved through flooded or drying terrain, including a “white bathtub ring” visible more than 100 feet above.

Florido then asked about another type of intervention: technology that would allow scientists to genetically modify species to make them more resilient to climate change, and a debate among scientists about whether to do it. Rott said those questions get at what he sees as a broader set of ethical issues that extend beyond individual research projects and involve how active society should be in preserving nature.

When Florido asked whether reporting has become harder under a federal administration he described as less friendly to environmental concerns, Rott said that over almost 15 years of covering the environment, it has become more difficult to get permission to talk to federal scientists. He said one of the barriers is that requests for access must be approved through Washington, and that in a recent story he sought to speak with federal researchers working to protect a rare salamander in the Southeast but received only email responses and no availability to talk.

Rott said he also hears from scientists that funding for science has been cut—affecting universities and federal agencies—and that researchers become more cautious about what they are willing to say. He added that he hears concern from scientists that the world should not be “pulling back” from environmental and scientific leadership as change accelerates.

The conversation ended with Florido thanking Rott for speaking about his beat and his reporting work on how humans relate to the natural world.