Francesca Lyman

Rachel Carson. David Brower. Aldo Leopold. These luminaries are often credited with igniting the modern environmental movement. Yet there’s another monumental figure, now sometimes overlooked, who spearheaded many of the movement’s most important ideas and initiatives: Stewart Udall.

A Westerner who fought what he called “the myth of superabundance,” and a prevailing attitude of growth for its own sake, Udall appealed for a new “land conscience” to conserve public lands.

From Port Townsend to Pioneer Square, visit supernatural hotels frequented by ghost hunters from across the country this Halloween.
/ October 20, 2023
The Lodge at St. Edward Park in Kenmore, formerly a Catholic seminary abandoned for 40 years and rumored to be haunted, is now a luxury 84-room hotel. (Robert Aglow for Crosscut)
From its foggy coastlines to its primeval forests, Washington is steeped in dark legends and ghostly tales. Little wonder it has been a location for eerie movies with ...

They used to be considered bad luck onboard, but an increasing number of female crew members are stepping onto boats headed to Alaska.

Francesca Lyman is a Seattle-based journalist and author who writes for newspapers and magazines. She is the author of The Greenhouse Trap: What We're Doing to the Atmosphere and How We Can Slow Global Warming, with World Resources Institute; and a children's book, Inside the Dzanga-Sangha Rain Forest, with the American Museum of Natural History.

The long-awaited decision sparked a wide range of responses – from exuberant backslapping among the corporation’s top executives and followers on social media to hand-wringing among consumer protection advocates and cries of shock among nonprofit thrift stores. Truth in Advertising (TINA.org), a Madison, Conn., consumer-advocacy nonprofit dedicated to fighting false advertising and deceptive marketing, called the ruling “bad news.”
“This ruling is an insult to all the real, genuine nonprofits...

A new documentary explores the life and work of former Interior Secretary Stewart Udall, who contributed to many landmark environmental laws.

The journals of the scientists, artists, and filmmakers on expedition to a remote rain forest in Central Africa, home to Baka pygmies, gorillas, elephants and 200 foot trees.

Book on global warming--Penguin Books

They used to be considered bad luck onboard, but an increasing number of female crew members are stepping onto boats headed to Alaska.
Venturing into deep, often treacherous waters. Winching ropes in gale-force winds. Leaning into waves that whip over the bows of their boats. Commercial fishermen face extraordinary on-the-job hazards. In 2021, the U.S. Department of Labor ranked their profession the second deadliest, behind logging.
Many assume this tough and dangerous profession is a man’s j...

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Charity-watchers say Savers and stores like it are quietly reaping a bonanza on donated goods, giving back minimally to charities while spouting slogans like “Donating to Value Village is a great way to Donate to Charity.”

Francesca Lyman’s investigation of a for-profit thrift store chain which does more than $1.2 billion in business a year, while masquerading as a charity, has won an Arlene Award for Writing that Makes a Difference. The award comes from the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA), which honors outstanding nonfiction work produced on a freelance basis each year.

The story was reported for InvestigateWest with support from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

ASJA is the professiona...

Several years ago, with a grant from the Fund, InvestigateWest uncovered a for-profit global thrift store chain headquartered in Washington State that was using marketing to make itself sound like a nonprofit charity in order to encourage people to donate goods it could sell, while revealing that little of its apparent revenue was reaching charities. After that reporting, the state attorney general sued the company, alleging that it used deceptive marketing to make it look like a charity and ...

Let nature give you a ‘jab in the arm’~
Interactions with the natural world can give you a kind of booster shot, inoculating against the anxiety and trauma brought on by the COVID pandemic.

The Bellevue-based for-profit thrift store chain won a lawsuit over its marketing approach, but nonprofit competitors aren't happy.