Natasha Daly, Writer and Editor, National Geographic

Natasha Daly is an award-winning writer and editor at National Geographic, where her investigative reporting focuses on animals: their welfare, conservation and exploitation. She has a special interest in the intersection of animals and culture: how social media and societal trends shape our perceptions, and treatment, of animals.

Her feature story on unseen suffering in the global wildlife tourism industry was the cover story of the June 2019 issue of National Geographic Magazine. She reported this story on four different continents over 18 months. 

Daly has appeared on The Today Show, Nightline, NPR’s 1A and Short Wave, BBC News, ABC News, and CBC Radio. Her work has been covered in The New York Times, The Washington Post, People and more. She’s been profiled in the Columbia Journalism Review.

In 2020, she won the National Press Club’s Ann Cottrell Free Animal Reporting Award for her cover story on wildlife tourism, and a National Magazine Award (Ellie) for her work to bring her wildlife tourism reporting alive on social platforms. She was awarded second place for Outstanding Beat Reporting in the Society of Environmental Journalism’s (SEJ) Awards for Reporting on the Environment for her 2019 animal welfare coverage. She was awarded Reporter of the Year in 2017 by the Humane Society of the United States and was honored for Outstanding Investigative Reporting by the Society of Environmental Journalism in 2018 for her work documenting illegal wildlife tourism the Amazon. She is a recipient of a 2017 SEJ Fund for Environmental Journalism storytelling grant. 

Before joining National Geographic in 2015, she worked as an editor for two Washington-based nonprofits. She is from Toronto, Canada and holds a bachelor's degree in history from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Daly lives in Washington, D.C.