David Yetman Net Worth 2026: PBS Host, Author and Scholar

No reputable outlet has published a net worth estimate for David Yetman. The $23.5 million figure that appears on some websites has no source, and it does not fit his career. Yetman is a University of Arizona research social scientist, author and host of a public-television documentary series, not a Hollywood producer. His income has come from academic work, book royalties, public-television production and, earlier, a county government salary.

What is David Yetman's net worth?

There is no Forbes profile, no disclosed salary and no press estimate for Yetman's personal wealth. The previous version of this page gave $23.5 million and described him as a Los Angeles producer of sitcoms and reality shows. That description matches no record of the real David Yetman, and we have removed it.

What is on record points to a modest academic income rather than a media fortune. His show, In the Americas with David Yetman, airs on PBS stations but is funded by gifts and grants. In 2022 the University of Arizona reported that Yetman had not been sure the series could continue until new donors paid for its 10th season. A host who has to raise money to keep his series going is not drawing a large television salary from it.

Yearly earnings, income and salary

Earlier versions of this page listed a yearly income of $1 million, a monthly income of $84,000 and a daily income of $2,800, credited to an unnamed "survey". No such survey exists in any source we could find, so those figures have been deleted. Yetman's known sources of income are:

• University of Arizona: he has been a research social scientist at the Southwest Center since 1992, according to the show's website.
• Books: he has written or co-written more than a dozen titles, mostly for university presses.
• Television: he hosts and produces In the Americas, a donor-funded series, and earlier hosted The Desert Speaks.
• Public office: he served on the Pima County Board of Supervisors from 1977 to 1988.

Early life and family

David Albert Yetman was born in New Jersey in 1941, according to Wikipedia. His father was a Methodist minister. He suffered from acute asthma as a boy, so his family moved to the dry climate of Arizona: first to Duncan in 1954, then to Prescott in 1955, where he went to Prescott High School. The earlier claim that he grew up in a small town and moved to Los Angeles after college is not supported by any source.

David Yetman's wife

We could not find a reliable source that names his spouse, so we do not publish one. A 2022 University of Arizona story mentions that he played the organ at the wedding of longtime friends who later helped fund his show.

Education

Yetman earned a PhD in philosophy from the University of Arizona in 1972. In the 1970s he began trading carvings made by the Seri people of Sonora, Mexico. That work led to decades of research on the region's indigenous communities and their use of plants.

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Professional life

Politics and conservation

In 1977, Yetman was elected to the Pima County Board of Supervisors as a Democrat and served until 1988. He used that office to protect public land around Tucson. He then led the Tucson Audubon Society as executive director before joining the University of Arizona in 1992. His conservation record is honored in two ways. The Tucson Audubon Society gives an annual David Yetman Award for conservation in southern Arizona. And the David Yetman Trail, a hike of roughly six miles in the Tucson Mountains near Gates Pass, is named for him.

Television

In the Americas is produced with Dan Duncan at the University of Arizona's Southwest Center and distributed nationally by American Public Television. Episodes cover places from Alaska's Ketchikan and Washington's Cascade Range to Brazil's Salvador, Oaxaca's forests and the Lacandon region of Chiapas. By 2025, twelve seasons were listed on PBS member station sites.

Books

His books focus on Sonora, the Southwest and desert plants. They include:

• Sonora: An Intimate Geography (1996)
• Mayo Ethnobotany (2002, with Thomas Van Devender)
• The Great Cacti (2007)
• The Ópatas: In Search of a Sonoran People (2010)
• Conflict in Colonial Sonora (2012)
• The Saguaro Cactus: A Natural History (2020)
• Natural Landmarks of Arizona (2021)

Awards

Yetman won an Emmy in 2007 for The Desert Speaks and another in 2014 for In the Americas. In September 2024, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences inducted him into its Silver Circle, which honors long careers in television.

Age, height and where he lives

Born in 1941, Yetman is about 84 or 85 in 2026. The earlier claim that he was 51 was clearly wrong. His height and weight have never been published, and we removed the figures given here before. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.

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How we checked this page

We confirmed his biography with his Wikipedia entry, the In the Americas website, two University of Arizona news stories, WVIA and KVOA. We rewrote the page because the old version described a different kind of career: a Los Angeles sitcom producer and consultant to networks. We removed the unsourced $23.5 million net worth, the invented income figures, the wrong age, the height and weight, and the empty contact details section. Note that several people named David Yetman have died in recent years, including in 2014 and 2025. Those obituaries refer to other men, not the Tucson television host.