Journalist and author Todd Wilkinson will discuss his new book, Ripple Effects: How to Save Yellowstone and America’s Most Iconic Wildlife Ecosystem, at Elk River Books, on Thursday, Jan. 19.
Ripple Effects is both a celebration of Yellowstone’s wildlife as well as a dire warning that we may be loving the park to death. Writing in the Salt Lake Tribune, Wilkinson notes that there were nearly 4.9 million visitors to the park in 2021, and “all these curious tourists create waves of troubling ripple effects.”
He continues, “Yellowstone is neither a standalone island nor a drive-through zoo. It is unique, the last ecosystem in the Lower 48 to contain all of the original mammal species that were on the landscape before Europeans arrived on the continent.”
Acclaimed science writer David Quammen writes, “Yellowstone is more than a park, as Todd Wilkinson reminds us in this deeply reported, important, passionate book. Yellowstone is more than an ecosystem. Yellowstone is a grand idea that America had, a hundred and fifty years ago, and retains—that nature, big and wild, is an essential part of our country. That idea can’t survive without defenders.”
Wilkinson, founder of Mountain Journal, has had a long and prominent role in American journalism. His writing has appeared widely, from National Geographic and The Guardian to The Washington Post and Christian Science Monitor. He is the author of Science Under Siege: The Politicians’ War on Nature and Truth and The Last Stand: Ted Turner’s Quest to Save a Troubled Planet, and a contributor to Witness to Spirit: My Life with Cowboys, Mozart and Indians by Robert Staffanson and Harley Shaw’s River of Spirits: A Natural History of New Mexico’s Las Animas Creek. Pairing with the photography of Thomas D. Mangelsen, he wrote the text for The Grizzlies of Pilgrim Creek: An Intimate Portrait of 399, the Most Famous Bear of Greater Yellowstone.
Elk River Books is located at 122 S. 2nd St. in downtown Livingston. The free event begins at 7 p.m., and a book signing and reception will follow.
