FIELD Report: Hutch Springs – Bruneau, Idaho
Chronic Sage-Grouse Brood Rearing Habitat Damage and Desertification Processes Hutch Spring is typical of the cow-battered dying springs and meadows in the Owyhee uplands in both Bruneau and Owyhee BLM-managed lands. It is located in the Battle Creek allotment grazed... read moreFIELD Report: Argenta, Nevada Rat Fink Headwaters
Rat Fink Exclosure Causing New Damage The upper of 2 band aid NRST exclosures in Rat Fink watershed has resulted (predictably) in extensive cow trailing along the fence. This has already caused gullying two feet deeper in one site where the fence crosses a cow... read moreFIELD Report: Meadows dying in Argenta, Nevada
Argenta Sage-grouse Meadow Monitoring Ignored in Many Sites in Mountain Pasture Areas Argenta springs and meadows are being destroyed by cattle grazing under the NRST quasi-Collaborative Group grazing scheme. The NRST “experts” drive right by this area when driving... read moreFIELD Report: Argenta, Nevada – Spring Conditions Ignored
Argenta PFC Ignores Numerous Riparian Areas After being ordered in spring 2017 by an Interior Administrative Law Judge to allow WildLands Defense access to Argenta monitoring, WLD observed the biased manner in which PFC (riparian condition) monitoring was being... read more[Letter from Nevada] | The Great Republican Land Heist by Christopher Ketcham
“[I]n 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.
Brian Ertz
Board President
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.
Katie Fite
Board Secretary
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.