Ashley D'Souza

Environmental justice reporting can be emotionally heavy and hard to swallow, but “there are some really uplifting stories,” the KSJ Fellow explains.

One research group in Boston is using local materials and accessible methods to restore marshland and protect the coast against intensified storms — but funding delays put their work in jeopardy.

Audio journalism story about the science behind Miyawaki mini-forests and a mini-forest planting event in Brookline. Also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

This summer, the Vermont Center for Ecostudies (VCE) launched a pilot program to study cavity-nesting bees to learn how to bolster their declining populations. Biologists installed 65 bee hotels — wooden blocks built with nesting cavities — on farms in the Lake Champlain region, then monitored which species checked into the hotels and how they responded to various pesticides...

As a queer person doing their best to survive the past few months of political chaos, I’ve often turned to nature — specifically, wild animals — for guidance.

Climate change is pushing manufacturers to use more sustainable, weather-resistant, and noncombustible materials.
Outdoor living products are becoming highly customizable, which expands their applications and saves time for architects.
As the indoors spill into the outdoors, interior designers are playing a larger role in creating cohesive spaces.

On a typical workday at RARE Restoration, Seth Barrett would arrive at the shop to see that his four in-house employees already had all the tools and machines up and running. He’d spend the first half of the day interacting with customers and returning projects to them. He’d then go downstairs to his workshop and work on repairs, while his two on-the-field employees worked in people’s homes.

That was during good times. Now Barrett is down to just one other employee, and work is scarce.

Since the beginning of the U.S. outbreak in January 2022, bird flu has been found in approximately 12,000 wild birds nationally, with cases in all 50 states. The virus has also caused outbreaks in poultry and dairy cows, leading to nearly 70 human cases in the U.S., primarily in dairy and poultry workers.

Now, birds in Brookline are falling victim to bird flu as Massachusetts faces its largest outbreak of the virus yet. Here’s what the town is doing to address bird flu and how to stay safe.

Flash fiction story published in The Margins, the Asian American Writers’ Workshop's award-winning literary magazine.

I return to you, Bird Freaks, from my longest hiatus yet. Would you believe me if I said that you didn’t hear from me for the past nine (or ten) months because I was pregnant? In a sense of the word, I was: pregnant with ideas for news stories, features, poems, and songs, and busy writing, publishing, and performing all of them. I am proud to announce that I have since birthed those pieces, and they are out finding their places in the world. I am left with an empty nest.

An oil spill in the Muddy River on Sunday left a sheen on the surface of the river, and left ducks and geese coated in oil on either bank.
Emergency responders on the scene Sunday afternoon said they were still working to investigate the cause of the spill. Both the Brookline and Boston fire departments responded to an area near the Longwood MBTA station.

Poem republished in Olive. Originally published in the Writers Without Margins literary journal.

Tucked away near Brookline’s southern border next to the Baker School is a lush conservation area teeming with biodiversity — and 600 million year old rocks.