Take your book club "Deep into Yellowstone"

Book clubs are great fun. But members sometimes struggle to choose a book, buy copies easily, or create stimulating discussion. Here’s a way around those challenges.

• Order copies of my new book at a discount and with FREE shipping. 
• Receive a list of questions designed to stimulate interesting discussion. 
• Enjoy personalized inscriptions for your club's books.  

Deep into Yellowstone: A Year's Immersion in Grandeur and Controversy 

The year of immersion begins when my wife Mary and I trust the pull of Yellowstone; leave family, friends, and security after thirty-five years in Oregon; and relocate to Gardiner, Montana, at Yellowstone’s north gate. 

As you read Deep into Yellowstone, you are right there with Mary and me as we cross-country ski, hike, bicycle, and backpack into Yellowstone’s wild grandeur. Along the way, you learn about important controversies that stimulate discussion: the dispute over hunting park wolves along Yellowstone’s border, the debate about whether wolves help or harm the ecosystem and the local economy, the outrage over the removal of grizzlies from ESA protection, the fight to stop the slaughter of park bison, the reality of overuse of the park, and the effort to stop a gold mine right on the park’s border. 

I’ve heard from readers that Deep into Yellowstone leaves them feeling a deeper love for Yellowstone and a stronger commitment to protect the park's wildlife and wildlands from threats from many directions and factions.

What others say about Deep into Yellowstone:

"Eminent naturalist and wildlife advocate Rick Lamplugh draws from a deep personal wellspring of experience and knowledge to take readers into Yellowstone’s wild heart." Cristina Eisenberg, PhD, Chief Scientist, Earthwatch Institute

“Lamplugh is a word artist; Yellowstone is his palette." Julianne Baker, Yellowstone Instructor

“This book stands as a loving tribute to Yellowstone and all it's complexities." Jenny Golding, Editor, AYellowstoneLife.com

"A touch of Bill Bryson’s whimsy, a dose of Edward Abbey’s insight, and the story-telling charm of John McPhee." John Gillespie, Geologist

Rick Lamplugh

Ordering is easy and economical:

With a 15% discount on your order of four or more books, you save $2.35 per book.

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Send me an email at ricklamplugh@gmail.com. Tell me how many books your club needs. 

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Let’s create an inspiring book club session. Email ricklamplugh@gmail.com

Lawsuit Filed to Protect Yellowstone's Grizzlies

Photo of grizzly from USFWS

WildEarth Guardians and Western Environmental Law Center have filed a federal lawsuit challenging the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's flawed decision to remove Endangered Species Act protections from Yellowstone’s grizzlies. Grizzlies are threatened by dwindling food sources, isolation, habitat loss, poaching, human-caused mortality, and the worsening impacts of climate change. Fewer than 1,800 grizzlies survive in the lower 48; about 700 roam the Greater Yellowstone area. The premature removal of ESA safeguards not only undermines the recovery of the species, it puts grizzlies that step beyond the safety of our national parks in the crosshairs of trophy hunters.

The lawsuit contends that the Service illegally designated grizzlies in Greater Yellowstone as a “distinct population segment” and removed ESA protection without considering the impact that removal will have on other struggling grizzly populations in the lower 48. The Service also failed to use the best available science to determine that grizzlies in the Yellowstone region have recovered.

Yellowstone’s isolated grizzly bears have not connected to bears elsewhere in the U.S., including those in and around Glacier National Park. Grizzlies also have not reclaimed historic habitats such as the Bitterroot Range along the Montana-Idaho border. The sad fact is that grizzlies are no longer in nearly 98 percent of their historic range.

Hunted, trapped, and poisoned, grizzly bear populations in the lower 48 plummeted from 50,000 bears to only a few hundred by the 1930s. In response, the Service designated the species as threatened under the ESA in 1975. This probably saved grizzlies from extinction.

The lawsuit says that at last count, around 690 grizzly bears resided in the Greater Yellowstone region in 2016. That declined from 717 bears in 2015 due to near record-breaking grizzly mortality. At least 139 bears have been killed since 2015 (20 documented deaths in 2017, 58 in 2016, and 61 in 2015). At least 98 bears have died due to human-causes. Thirty deaths remain undetermined or under investigation.

A grizzly-sized Thank You to WildEarth Guardians and Western Environmental Law Center for fighting for Endangered Species Act protection for Yellowstone’s grizzlies! This legal battle is essential. But it’s also expensive, and these are non-profit organizations. Mary and I will donate to help both organizations. I hope you can too. Whatever you can afford will be well used and tax-deductible.

Indie author Rick Lamplugh lives near Yellowstone’s north gate and writes to protect wildlife and preserve wildlands. His new book, Deep into Yellowstone: A Year’s Immersion in Grandeur and Controversy, is available signed from Rick, or unsigned on Amazon.  His best seller, In the Temple of Wolves, is available signed, or unsigned on Amazon.

Don't "Modernize" the Endangered Species Act; Just Fund It!

Photo of grizzly and wolf (both beneficiaries of ESA) via public domain 

The Endangered Species Coalition is bringing me and a number of other advocates to Washington, D.C., for a couple days to lobby for the Endangered Species Act. I respect the work of this national coalition of hundreds of conservation-minded organizations, and I’m glad to go. To prepare, I’m researching and writing. Here’s some of what I’ve found.

The ESA faces a coordinated attack. One of the attackers is U.S. Representative Rob Bishop (R-UT)—the same politician who wants to sell off our public lands. Another is U.S. Senator John Barrasso (R-WY). He wants to “modernize the ESA.” (Conservationists know that what he really means is “gut the ESA.”) He says that less than 3 percent of protected species have recovered enough to no longer need protection. Then he proclaims, “As a doctor, if I admit 100 patients to the hospital and only 3 recover enough under my treatment to be discharged, I would deserve to lose my medical license.”

That’s a good sound bite. But let’s take his medical argument further. 

Consider a species being placed under ESA protection as similar to an ailing person’s ambulance ride to the emergency room. Once the patient arrives, the hospital must spend money to diagnose and fix the problem. More must be spent on follow-up to make sure the treatment worked. If a hospital failed to spend this money, the patient would not get better. But that wouldn’t be the fault of the ambulance that delivered the patient. 

In truth, listing a species under the ESA—giving it the ambulance ride—is the relatively easy step. Once listed, time, resources, and money must be spent to implement a plan that will fix the problems that create the threat. That money is not being spent. The ESA is not the problem. The problem is shortsighted politicians refusing to fund it adequately.  

The Center for Biological Diversity (a member of the Endangered Species Coalition) studied ESA funding and found it has been “chronically and severely underfunded.” Yet even while shortchanged, the ESA has been—contrary to Senator Barrasso’s claim—incredibly effective. It has prevented the extinction of 99 percent of species under its protection and put hundreds of species on the road to recovery.

The Center determined that the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s current annual budget for recovery of the more than 1,500 protected species is $82 million per year. That covers little more than basic administrative functions.

In their estimation, “…fully implementing recovery plans for all listed species managed by the Fish and Wildlife Service would require approximately $2.3 billion per year, about the same amount that’s given to oil and gas companies to subsidize extraction of fossil fuels on public lands and a tiny fraction of the roughly $3.7 trillion federal budget in 2015.”

The Center’s solution is simple: increase annual appropriation for endangered species recovery over the next 10 years. 

In other words, Dr. Barrasso, if you really want to modernize, spend the money to treat the patient that the ambulance delivered to you for help.

Rick Lamplugh writes to protect wildlife and preserve wildlands. He lives near Yellowstone’s north gate and is just finishing his new book, Deep into Yellowstone: A Year’s Immersion in Grandeur and Controversy. He is the author of the Amazon bestseller In the Temple of Wolves. Available as eBook or paperback . Or as a signed copy from Rick.

To learn about the Endangered Species Coalition

To read the Center for Biological Diversity’s study