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 OnlineFIELD Report: Disaster Springbrook – Vale, Oregon
Louse Canyon Complex of Allotments – Disaster Spring Way back around year 2000 or so, Vale BLM conducted a rangeland health assessment in the Louse Canyon Complex of allotments. Grazing was causing scouring of drainages, head-cutting, desiccation and loss of spring... read moreFIELD Report: Rock Creek Headwaters, Dead Grouse Spring – Argenta, Nevada
Argenta Rock Creek Headwaters Dead Grouse Spring The NRST BLM-USFS-Cow Consultant Team of riparian “experts” (who exhibit extraordinary bias towards the interests of the permittees) drive right by severely degraded springs, meadows and drainages in Argenta – en route... read moreFIELD Report: Trout Creek Headwater Drainage – Burns, Oregon
Trout Creek Headwaters, West Side of East Fork – Cow-Caused Desertification Another western headwater tributary drainage to Trout Creek in the Trout Creek Mountain allotment. This level of cattle use and permanent, irreversible damage the Burns BLM... 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.