Mission
WildLands Defense is dedicated to protecting and improving the ecological and aesthetic qualities of the wildlands and wildlife communities of the western United States for present and future generations. WLD does so by fostering the natural enjoyment and appreciation for wildlands habitats and wildlife by means of legal and administrative advocacy, wildland and wildlife monitoring and scientific research, and by supporting and empowering active public engagement.
Mystery Grand Canyon Animal Is a Gray Wolf—Can It Survive?
KAIBAB PLATEAU, Arizona—On a recent evening not long after dusk, Natalie Ertz stood in a meadow near the Grand Canyon’s north rim and howled like a wolf.
There was a good reason for the howl.
Ertz, the executive director of a nonprofit group called Wildlands Defense, was hoping to catch a glimpse of an animal that has been notoriously elusive here in recent days. . .
National Geographic Online
BLM’s Soda Fire Rehab Threatens Sage-Grouse, Redband Trout
The Soda Fire started on private ranch land near Cow Creek in Owyhee County. It was detected, and left to burn for THREE HOURS by persons at the ranch. THEN it blew up onto public land, became a fire tornado of sorts, and cost millions of dollars in fire fighting... read moreThey Came to Take a County: Land Seizure Agitators, Propagandists, Politicians
MARCH 17, 2016 by KATIE FITE Thanks to the Bundy Gang, public lands advocates became aware of elements of the Land Seizure movement that had been operating in the shadows. The curtain was drawn back on networks of agitators and propagandists: Constitutional “experts”... read more
‘The Rogue Agency’
Christopher Ketchum on USDA’s Wildlife Services: …”Since 2000, Wildlife Services operatives have killed at least 2 million native mammals and 15 million native birds. Many of these animals are iconic in the American West and beloved by the public.... read more[Letter from Nevada] | The Great Republican Land Heist by Christopher Ketcham
[Brian] Ertz had grown up in Boise, and as a teenager his backyard was the wilderness of southern Idaho and northern Nevada, the vast Great Basin steppe that ecologists have come to call the sagebrush sea. . .Ertz explained why the sage steppe was called a sea. “Because in the spring the new shoots on the sage, iridescent, light, and soft, bow in the wind and what that creates on the landscape is an evocation of the wind on the sea. And when the wind blows at dusk after the rain, there’s the sweetest smell.”. .
Harper's Magazine
Natalie Ertz
Executive Director
Inspired by a howl with the late Phantom Hill Wolf Pack of central Idaho, Natalie Ertz has been tracking and monitoring wolves in the central Idaho backcountry for over six years.
During much of that time, Natalie served and learned from Lynne Stone of the Boulder-White Cloud Council providing oversight of the federal and state MANagement of wolves.
Natalie’s passion for wolves and public landscapes is inspired by a deep appreciation for the wild, an appreciation borne on-the-ground.
Katie Fite
Director of Public Lands
Katie Fite brings over 30 years of on-the-ground experience to WLD’s advocacy.
As Western Watersheds Project’s Biodiversity Director, Katie has monitored more public ground–from Modena to the Modoc to Mcdermitt, the Lemhis to Little Blue Table to the Little Lost to Leslie Gulch, from Jarbidge to Jump Creek to Jim Sage, the Pahsimeroi to the Pancake Range, Calico Mountains to Castleford–and brought more headache to those anti-environmental bureaucrats at BLM and Forest Service than arguably any other single person in the Western United States.
Brian Ertz
Litigation Director
Brian Ertz is Natalie Ertz’s brother. Brian is in his final year of law school, currently serves as the Chair of the Sierra Club’s National Grazing Team, Conservation Chair of the Sawtooth Group of the Sierra Club and previously spent 7 years as Media Director for Western Watersheds Project. Since that time Brian has consulted a variety of public interest environmental nonprofits on administrative, policy, and media advocacy.