Hiking with the wildlife author who studies Yosemite’s high peaks: ‘These animals are equal to us’

Inspired by childhood encyclopedias and Jane Goodall, Beth Pratt writes about the more than 150 species in the national park - and transports readers to a rarefied world

A shrill call was followed by a flash of movement through a pile of boulders on a high country slope in Yosemite national park. Hello, Sophie!" Beth Pratt responded to the round, feisty pika who had briefly emerged to pose defiantly in the sun.

Pratt, a conservation leader and wildlife advocate, has spent more than a decade observing the tiny mammals and the other inhabitants of these serene granite domes and the alpine meadows they overlook, which gleamed gold on a crisp afternoon in mid-October.