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 OnlineWLD Protests BLM’s Proposal to Increase Grazing, Ketchum Idaho
WildLands Defense, Inc (WLD) officially protested BLM’s proposed decision to increase the number of sheep grazing on the Elkhorn Allotment just south of Ketchum and Sun Valley to 2500, roughly doubling the amount of livestock on the landscape. WLD protested the... read moreOwyhee Soda Fire Rehab to Benefit Public Lands Ranchers
Idaho BLM has its PR machine in overdrive hyping the monstrously expensive Owyhee Soda Fire rehab plan designed largely to benefit Owyhee public lands welfare ranchers. SIXTY SEVEN MILLION DOLLARS! Yet Neil Kornze estimated a ten million cost only a few weeks ago. WLD... read more
Lawless Grazing in Battle Mountain BLM Argenta Allotment 2015 under BLM Director Neil Kornze and the National Riparian “Services” Team
United States Department of the Interior BUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT Mount Lewis Field Office 50 Bastian Road Battle Mountain, Nevada 89820 Phone: 775-635-4000 Fax: 775-635-4034 http://www.blm.gov/nv/st/en/fo/battle_mountain_field.html MEMORANDUM Michael Vermeys,... 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.