Photo by Julia Mitchem
2024 projects
Consider the Condor - Deseret Magazine
This tiny Florida gecko is disappearing—can we save it? - National Geographic
Pining for the Rocklands - The Marjorie
What Would it Take to Bring Reliable Power to Puerto Rico? - Sierra Magazine
Blog Posts by Marlowe Starling:
Environmental Journalist
Marlowe Starling
About
Marlowe Starling is an environmental journalist who writes about climate, conservation, and culture with special interests in wildlife and coastlines. Her work has appeared in National Geographic, The New York Times, the Guardian, Sierra Magazine, Mongabay, The Marjorie, Deseret Magazine, and more. She earned her master's degree in science journalism from New York University and her bachelor's degree in journalism with a specialization in wildlife ecology from the University of Florida.
As a Miami native, Marlowe grew up surrounded by real-time examples of how climate change is threatening the places we love and live in, inspiring her to pursue a career writing rich stories about the intersection of nature and culture. Having written about South Florida's endangered wildlife and ecosystems—such as the Florida reef gecko, sharks, seagrapes, pine rocklands, and a polluted Biscayne Bay—she is excited to continue reporting on the way climate change is affecting both human and wildlife coastal communities at home and abroad. She is honored to be an Environmental Journalism Fellow with the Safina Center, allowing her to pursue global stories with a healthy balance of narrative prowess and scientific grit.
Marlowe has enjoyed working on a number of reporting projects in her early career thus far. As a Launchpad Fellow in 2024, she researched the Caribbean's increasingly scarce conch culture; wrote about how environmental nonprofits saved a rare patch of wildlife habitat in suburban Miami; made her Nat Geo debut; investigated a murky ballot item to enshrine hunting and fishing rights; and completed a three-part series about Florida's complex role in sustainable shark management. In 2023, she contributed reporting to the true-crime climate podcast Drilled, focusing on the criminalization of climate protests around the world. She was also an editorial fellow for Sierra Magazine and helped conceptualize, design, and write for an inaugural kids magazine focused on science and art. In 2022, she wrote about novel red tide research and helped analyze water quality data for a collaborative Pulitzer Center project focused on the Clean Water Act, which won two awards for student-led reporting. In 2021, she led the creation of a narrative nonfiction magazine as its first art director and led a project on invasive species in the pet trade as a Florida Climate Institute Fellow. She has also contributed to reporting projects focused on PFAS contamination and nutrient pollution.
Marlowe's reporting has taken her from Florida to Puerto Rico and from Tanzania to Morocco. Overseas, her stories have spanned from energy justice to soil science, and from musical tourism to how climate change affects marginalized communities. She is also a photographer, multimedia journalist, a diligent fact-checker, and a die-hard copy-editing veteran, giving her plenty of ways to keep busy. Although she's now based in Brooklyn, Marlowe frequently returns home, where she relishes a serene paddle through Miami's mangrove forests.