Jonathan Ratner

  • The American Experiment had a pretty good run of two and a half centuries. It was far from perfect but despite its flaws it was a model here and around the world. Obama said something about 20 years ago that we are not red states or blue states, but as time would tell his rhetorical…

  • On the Thunder Basin National Grassland of northeastern Wyoming, the livestock industry has been pursuing an aggressive campaign to expand poisoning and shooting of prairie dogs. And in 2020, the Forest Service gave them a plan amendment that radically expanded prairie dog killing, and eliminated a special designation of a Black-footed Ferret Reintroduction Area to…

  • Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) is a prion-based disease that is basically human created/human exacerbated. CWD, like all the other prion-based diseases like Mad Cow, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) are 100% fatal and unlike bacterial and viral disease agents, prions are extremely difficult to neutralize. Normal autoclave methods and incineration are ineffective at rendering prions not infectious.…

  • In late May, Sage Steppe Wild convened a training workshop lead by a wide range of experts in western ecology, with a focus on how citizens can be more effective advocates for our public lands. The How Not to be Cowed workshop was a great success, and about 20 people traveled to this remote rangeland…

  • That is the title of a press release from a recently released report by the Wold Wildlife Fund. WWF’s flagship Living Planet Report details sharp declines in monitored wildlife populations with the steepest drops recorded in Latin America and the Caribbean (95%), Africa (76%) and Asia–Pacific (60%), followed by North America (39%) and Europe and…

  • Well, I will add one to the collections that Norman Bishop has put out about wolves and humans. This one is not quite so old. This one was from a bit before delisting, from 2006. For about 7 years, I lived on the closest piece of private land to the south east corner of Yellowstone…

  • Two book recommendations have come in: SAGEBRUSH EMPIRE: How a Remote Utah County Became the Battlefront of American Public Lands by Jonathan P. Thompson San Juan County, Utah, contains some of the most spectacular landscapes in the world, rich in culture and history. But it’s also long been plagued with racism, bitterness, and politics as…

  • If you have come across an excellent book or very important article or study on a topic of interest to readers of The Wildlife News, send us your review of the book with your photo, or a link to the article or study. The Editor

Subscribe to get new posts right in your Inbox

×