Western North American Naturalist
scientific journal
Western North American Naturalist, formerly The Great Basin Naturalist, is a peer-reviewed scientific journal focusing on biodiversity and conservation of western North America. The journal's geographic coverage includes "from northernmost Canada and Alaska to southern Mexico, and from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean." Established in 1939, it is published by the Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum (Brigham Young University). The journal is published quarterly, with monographs published irregularly in Monographs of the Western North American Naturalist.
History
Vasco M. Tanner founded the magazine after a term as editor at Proceedings magazine. His hope for the journal was to have a publication that covered a wide range of biology-related topics in addition to having a place to publish his own research. From 1939 through 1966, the journal limited the publication of their issues to once or twice a year due to World War II. Franklin Harris encouraged the journal to continue publication, and it was one of the first journals to be used "for exchange purposes" by university libraries. From 1967 on, the journal published quarterly issues. Tanner served as editor of the Great Basin Naturalist until 1970. Steven Wood, Tanner's successor as editor, established an editorial board for the journal. The board allowed for the journal to utilize an improved peer review process.
The public source identifies “Western North American Naturalist” as scientific journal. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Western, North and American.
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Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q15763195. 8 of 8 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1939, 1966, 1967 and 1970.
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This entry incorporates text from “Western North American Naturalist” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.