Conserving Nature in the Greater Yellowstone (A Utah Law Faculty Book Talk)

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Originally aired November 10, 2025

This event took place at the Natural History Museum of Utah

This is a conversation between author Bob Keiter, Wallace Stegner Professor of Law and founding director of the Wallace Stegner Center, and Jennifer Napier-Pearce, Chief of Staff for the George S. and Dolores Dore Eccles Foundation, about Bob's new book, Conserving Nature in Greater Yellowstone: Controversy and Change in an Iconic Landscape.

For more than 150 years, the Yellowstone region has played a prominent role in the United States’ nature conservation agenda. In this book, Keiter explores both the successes and controversies connected to this storied region’s conservation—from the recovery of the grizzly bear to the reintroduction of wolves and beyond.

ABOUT THE BOOK:

The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, extending across three states and twenty counties and embracing more than sixteen million acres of federal land as well as private and tribal lands, can only be characterized as a complex, jurisdictionally fragmented landscape. As Keiter makes clear, the quest for common ground among federal land managers, state officials, local communities, conservationists, ranchers, Indigenous tribes, and others is a vital, enduring task.

Keiter’s book shows how the region’s other national parks and forests have largely followed suit of lessons learned in Yellowstone, prioritizing ecosystem-level conservation over industrial activity. Groundbreaking efforts are currently afoot to protect elk, deer, and pronghorn migration corridors and to maintain the park’s bison population. But explosive human population growth, development pressures, and accelerating recreational activities present new and different problems.

Conserving Nature in Greater Yellowstone shows us that the lessons gleaned from Yellowstone’s expansive nature conservation efforts are profoundly important for both the country and the world.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:

Robert B. Keiter is an award-winning public lands law and policy expert. He serves on the faculty at the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law, where he is the Wallace Stegner Professor of Law and is the founding director of the Wallace Stegner Center for Land, Resources, and the Environment. Keiter has written extensively on public land conservation and ecological management. His prior books include To Conserve Unimpaired: The Evolution of the National Park Idea (Island Press, 2013), Keeping Faith with Nature: Ecosystems, Democracy, and America’s Public Lands (Yale Univ. Press, 2003), Reclaiming the Native Home of Hope: Community, Ecology, and the West (Univ. of Utah Press, 1998), and The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem: Redefining America’s Wilderness Heritage (Yale Univ. Press, 1991). Keiter serves as a Trustee of the National Parks Conservation Association and the Foundation for Natural Resources and Energy Law, for which he served as President from 2013-2014. Previously, he served as a Senior Fulbright Scholar at Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu, Nepal. In 2008, he was named a University Distinguished Professor by the University of Utah.

Jennifer Napier-Pearce serves as the Chief of Staff for the George S. and Dolores Dore Eccles Foundation, one of the oldest and largest private philanthropic organizations in Utah. Previously, she served as a senior advisor and director of communication to Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, providing strategy and policy support. Prior to public service, Jennifer was executive editor of The Salt Lake Tribune, where she led the newspaper’s groundbreaking transition from a for-profit business to a nonprofit entity—the first newspaper in the U.S. to do so—and supported the team that won a 2017 Pulitzer Prize. She has received numerous honors, including the Governor’s Award for Excellence, Communicator of the Year by the Utah PIO Association, University of Utah Service to Journalism Award, and dozens of state and regional journalism awards.

This event sponsored by the Wallace Stegner Center for Land, Resources and the Environment at the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law and the Natural History Museum of Utah.