Artemis Institute

Yellowstonian founded by todd wilkinson and gus o'keefe, and hosted by artemis institute was launched in april of 2024. In support of the community outreach longtime journalist todd wilkinson is the editor and lead journalist for yellowstonian, with additional collaborations from community members and scientist from the region and beyond. Yellowstonian is devoted to exploring vital issues shaping the future of the greater yellowstone ecosystem and other parts of the wildlife-rich west. Since it officially went live in mid-april 2025 as a special project of artemis institute, yellowstonian's main objective as a public interest, non-profit, conservation journalism site was to build its reach and credibility. With crucial seed money contributed to artemis institute as gifts by a handful of donors, yellowstonian, accessible at yellowstonian.org, enlisted a company to help design a fully-functional web site that featured stories made available free to readers and also easily put into circulation on social media channels. In the eight months of its operation in 2024, yellowstonian's quest to prove its concept included its three principal contributors electing not to take any compensation and instead divert available and limited financial resources into leveraging the impact of yellowstonian content, taking the form of written investigative journalism stories, co-hosting a range of well-attended public events that were also live-streamed, appearing on podcasts and giving lectures at montana state university. In every area, yellowstonian successfully met its goals. Since its launch, yellowstonian grew its audience of followers to 25,000 on facebook by the end of 2024, its stories achieved collective levels of total engagement (views, shares, comments and other forms of circulation) that surpassed 1.5 million. We co-hosted public events on grizzly bear and wolf conservation policy at historic theaters in bozeman and missoula, were invited to give talks at events in jackson hole and the madison valley, moderated a discussion at the yellowstone summit on wildlife migrations and was asked to pen a foreword for an unprecedented study examining the impacts of sprawl on wildlife and private lands. Yellowstonian also delivered a widely cited series on sprawl and an unprecedented examination of the impacts of industrial outdoor recreation on wildlife. Those stories on sprawl have been credited with igniting citizens efforts to address growth issues which are transforming the ecosystem's 20 counties. In 2025, it is the hope of yellowstonian to keep growing its momentum and expand its capacity to deliver more.