About Me

I am a writer and communicator, based in Fort Collins, Colorado, who covers the environment, science, and culture, and the communications specialist for the Department of Anthropology and Geography at Colorado State University.

For many years, I have written as a correspondent for High Country News and my reporting has appeared in Audubon, Yale Environment 360, Hakai Magazine, Nature Conservancy, Wired, Scientific American, Slate, Pacific Standard, Orion, Grist, and many other print and digital publications.

As a university instructor, I developed and led Communications for Conservation, an online graduate certificate program at CSU that provides communications skills and strategies and conservation social science frameworks to scientists and practitioners. I have also taught writing and communications courses for the Department of Journalism and Media Communication and the Department of Human Dimensions of Natural Resources. I frequently speak with and present to classes and groups at universities and other organizations on environmental media and storytelling.

Through my work, I have reported across the American West and abroad. I have traveled grassland steppes in Colorado and Mongolia; toured coal mines in Wyoming and Germany; stomped along rivers and dams in Nevada and Thailand; walked inside prisons and atop mountain summits; and attended more city council meetings, public hearings, and water and climate policy summits than I care to count.

When not afield or in front of a computer, I am an opportunistic traveler with my wife and daughter, a camping fiend, and incorrigible Mets fan.

To contact me, send an email to joshuazaffos [at] yahoo [dot] com, or you can find me on Twitter and LinkedIn.