Meet the Pack: Winter 2025 Contributors

Get to know some of the talented contributors behind the Winter 2025 issue of National Wildlife magazine

By Laura Tangley and Jennifer Wehunt
NWF News
Dec 18, 2024

Clockwise from top left: Steven Kazlowski (photo courtesy of Steven Kazlowski), Marina Richie (photo by Wes Pyne), Katarina Zimmer (photo by Carolanne Leslie), Armando Veve (photo by Neal Santos)

We are honored to introduce a handful of the contributors who helped make our Winter 2025 issue of National Wildlife® magazine an insightful, inspiring read.

STEVEN KAZLOWSKI, a marine biologist turned award-winning photographer, was entranced as a young man by “the mesmerizing movement of a flock of small birds that landed on oak trees in my neighborhood bordering Queens, New York.” Since then, the Kingston, Washington-based photographer has spent decades documenting the wildlife, landscape and Indigenous subsistence traditions of Arctic Alaska (“As Wildlife Migrations Shift in Arctic Alaska, So Do the Iñupiat”). He feels “that original sense of wonder every time I witness an animal in its natural habitat.” See more of his work.

MARINA RICHIE of Bend, Oregon, was able to climb one of grad student Nina Ferrari’s Douglas firs with Ferrari in 2022, before wildfires hit H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest (“Undaunted, Grad Students Return to the Field After Wildfires”). “To be high up in the canopy, it changed my perspective on birds,” says Richie, who revisits the experience in an upcoming book slated for 2026 release. Her most recent book, Halcyon Journey: In Search of the Belted Kingfisher, won the 2024 John Burroughs Medal and a 2022 National Outdoor Book Award. Read more of her work.

ARMANDO VEVE, an award-winning artist in Philadelphia, illustrates a range of subjects but is “especially animated by the challenge of visualizing abstract scientific concepts” such as “Humans Are Forcing the Rapid Evolution of Wildlife. Can Animals Change Fast Enough?”. Beyond magazines, he works with authors and publishers on illustrated book projects and with puzzle and games creators. “My studio is a kind of cabinet of curiosity,” he says, “filled with toys, print ephemera, illustrated books, hanging plants, taxidermy and even musical instruments. ... I find comfort in and feed off of this visual clutter.” See more of his work.

KATARINA ZIMMER is a science and environment journalist covering “many facets of the living world, from the inner mechanics of genes and cells to the evolution of species and the vibrant ecosystems they form” (“Humans Are Forcing the Rapid Evolution of Wildlife. Can Animals Change Fast Enough?”). Based in Berlin, she also documents threats to our planet’s oceans, forests and climate. Before becoming a journalist, she developed a machine learning algorithm to identify bat species based on echolocation calls, “until I realized I was too greedy to focus on one patch of life science.” Read more of her work.