Craig Pittman is a native Floridian. He graduated from Troy State University in Alabama, where his muckraking work for the student paper prompted an agitated dean to label him "the most destructive force on campus." Since then he has covered a variety of newspaper beats and quite a few natural disasters, including hurricanes, wildfires and the Florida Legislature. Since 1998 he has reported on environmental issues for the Times. His work won the Waldo Proffitt Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism in Florida in 2004, 2006 and 2007, and a series of stories on Florida's vanishing wetlands that he wrote with Matthew Waite won the top investigative reporting award in both 2006 and 2007 from the Society of Environmental Journalists. He is the author of "Manatee Insanity: Inside the War Over Florida's Most Famous Endangered Species," and is co-author with Waite of "Paving Paradise: Florida's Vanishing Wetlands and the Failure of No Net Loss," both published by the University Press of Florida. He lives in St. Petersburg with his wife and two children.

Phone: (727) 893-8530

E-mail: craig@tampabay.com