Bio
Elizabeth Darby --

                 Darby began her career as a journalist at the United Nations (1978-1981) where she covered environment, women and children, and development issues for both the in-house diplomatic newspaper and for Gemini News Service. 

                 A third-generation native of Colorado, she returned West to briefly work for KCFR radio, the NPR affiliate and cover national and regional news, before she was tapped to join Newsweek to open the Rocky Mountain Bureau in Denver (1982-1986). There she specialized in issues of the environment as well as covered general assignments for Newsweek and Newsweek International.  In 1984, she received a DeKalb National Press award for her reporting on drought and agriculture. She also won national recognition for her coverage of the plight of the homeless and for several breaking news covers on environment and national political scandal at the EPA.  For Newsweek International, she provided head-of-state back-page interviews including former presidents, prime ministers and CEOs.

               She left Newsweek to write three books: on the American Landscape (edited with Robert C. Baron); on the public lands of the US; and edited a volume on South African children’s diaries who were led through the wilderness by the work of Ian Player and his Wilderness Foundation (all published by Fulcrum, 1987-88).  During this time she also served as the Chief Public Affairs Attaché for the Fourth World Wilderness Congress, where she guided international media through coverage and understanding of complex and relatively unknown issues of the environment, including climate change affects on wilderness; a nation's natural resources as national security; and facilitated press handling and  interviews for world leaders attending, including Gro Harlem Brundtland, James Baker, Nelson Rockefeller as well as scientists, dignitaries and Club of Rome members. 

                After undertaking an extended journey through South Africa's wilderness and parks to begin a fourth book, she then joined Publisher Joe Daniel to edit BUZZWORM: The Environmental Journal (Managing Editor, 1988 - 1992, Senior Editor, 1992 - 1994).  Under her creative editorial direction and with Daniel's stunning photographic vision, the magazine won numerous national awards in categories including editorial excellence, best news reporting, and best feature writing.  She, along with colleague Tony Beasley, received the World Hunger Year Media Award for a series of feature articles she developed entitled "Of Pollution and Poverty" which documented the toll of toxic environments on children and families living in poverty.

                Just after Glasnost was proclaimed by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1989, Darby was invited to the Soviet Union to cover and speak at the country’s first-ever national summit on the environment and agriculture (see “Green Cries from Red Square”); she was the only US journalist permitted to attend.  She also was invited to attend and cover private and public international conferences held in locations as varied as Sundance (a first private summit of US and Soviet foresters on climate change response in 1990) to Iquitos (a diplomatic negotiation and conference between environmental groups, Amazonian indigenous people and oil companies) and brought early national press attention to the environmental work of then-Senator Al Gore, Mikhail Gorbachev, Robert Redford, and Stephen Schneider, as well as regularly brought together our nation's leading scientists to bring attention to the state of our environment (see 1991 Global Report).
             She has traveled throughout wild and protected areas of South Africa, the Amazon, Europe, Russia and North America, covering wilderness, indigenous, and women, children and environment issues.  She was also the Editor of Buzzworm’s National Reports and author of the Forthcoming Trends sections and “Security and Environment” forecasts other national journalists looked to when developing their environmental news coverage.

               While leaving journalism on a daily basis to raise her two daughters, she turned her focus to authoring screenplays, fiction, coaching self-discovery (see Here You Begin) and to providing photography-as-literacy workshops to urban youth.  She is a Fellow of the International League of Conservation Writers.

                She is at work on several new titles including the book and blog Earth: Sacred/Possession, a reader and curriculum for HS and 1st year university courses in the philosophy of rights of Nature. Her book is Here You Begin, a guided journal and inspirational coaching guide to finding one's path and passion (in print Spring 2012) and she offers workshops internationally on vocation, purpose, passion and life-design using one's talents, gifts and courage. She is also starting a nonprofit group to provide solutions journalism on conservation and issues of the environment entitled Wild Re*Solve.
                               
                                

For speaking or writing enquiries, or project ideas to pursue together, please get in touch!

Looking forward to hearing from you.

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_Elizabeth Darby graduated cum laude from Barnard College, Columbia University, in 1980, with a BA (Honors) in Political Science and International Relations focusing on women, children and the environment and is multilingual.  She balances her time between the Rocky Mountains and the E.U. 
       Grizzly Bear footprints, Alaska. Image courtesy of USFWS National Digital Library







'Will we, as residents of the global community, have the will to force our leaders to adopt a change of attitude and take actions that match our change of heart toward our Earth refuge?  If we do not, our children will observe that it was politics that destroyed their chances to know the beauty, bounty and hope that springs from good land gently stewarded.'

Losses and Gains, a look at the 20 years since the first U.N. Conference on Environment, 1992,












             Grey wolf, image courtesy of USFWS/   National Digital Library



Nice Things Said . . . with gratitude to each and all.

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"A tremendous sense of sorrow and desperation came over me as I read Green Cries from Red Square. Tears filled my eyes as Elizabeth Darby's poignant words described the plight of our brothers, sisters and our Earth in the Soviet Union. . . We must all work together to save this planet which we share. Now is the time of need!  Thank you for the superb article. " K Goodrich,  ME.




Losses and Gains: 20 years since UNCED I

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"I've just discovered the existence of Buzzworm, much to my embarrassment apparently after years of ignorance. You have a wonderful magazine. The Losses and Gains Ecofolio was really superb; one of the best jobs of photo research and editing I've seen anywhere. My compliments to the chefs"  C. Groner, Berkeley, CA.

Environment as National Security

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"Your journal has really turned into a cornerstone of environmental journalism . . . The buzzworm in the wild has two aspects, the sound of defense and the action of offense.  Your journal is doing a very good job of sounding the alarm of defense of the environment; now is the time to take a little offense."  P. Malone, Athens, GA




©Elizabeth Darby 2010 to present

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