Magazine

“I try to give an empathetic voice to wildlife, which cannot speak for itself.”

Since its founding, St. Olaf’s emphasis on vocation has helped those in its community discover their place in the world. To understand the prismatic ways that students, alumni, and faculty think about vocation in their own lives, we spoke to Oles in an array of different positions and places in their lives to understand what propels them and how they stay true to their values — in their own words.

Todd Wilkinson ’84 is an award-winning journalist and author who has been writing about wildlife for four decades. He is a Bozeman, Montana-based correspondent for National Geographic and The Guardian, and he is the founder of Yellowstonian, which delivers impactful, fact-based conservation journalism. Read his reflection below.

I’ve always been passionate about nature and wildlife. As a conservation journalist, I try to illuminate what is often invisible to humans in our daily lives, and give an empathetic voice to wildlife, which cannot speak for itself.

Much of my work is about “big ideas”: those that push us out of our comfort zones and force us to rethink the way we’re doing business. Once we consider them, we can’t “unthink them” or return to the stuck places we were in before. I think of journalism as a catalyst for getting the reader to ponder a new point of view.

For example, I recently collaborated with the renowned photographer Thomas Mangelsen on a couple books about Jackson Hole Grizzly 399, the most famous living mother bear in the world. She has transformed the way people think about grizzlies, erasing frontier-era myths that portray them as human-eating killers. She has demonstrated how grizzlies and other animals possess sentience — both incredible intelligence and emotions.

And in April 2024, a colleague and I launched a new online, nonprofit conservation journalism site called Yellowstonian (yellowstonian.org). The site is devoted to elevating ecological literacy, celebrating Greater Yellowstone — which is the cradle of American wildlife conservation — and raising awareness about serious threats including population pressure and climate change.

I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have zero degrees of separation between vocation and avocation. While it was never stated overtly during my years at St. Olaf, I think it was clear among my classmates that the goal was to live a purposeful life.