Uncategorized

On their own, wolves walk into Washington state

By Mitch Friedman

In 2008, Canadian wolves didn’t wait for an invitation from biologists to move them into Washington state. Instead, they trotted…

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Environment · Water

Must water be enhanced and encased in plastic?

By Marjorie “Slim” Woodruff

If someone told me 10 years ago that people would willingly pay over $5 for a one-gallon container of water,…

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Uncategorized

Southeast county in Utah has a radioactive target on its back

By Zak Podmore

In the early 1980s, southeast Utah was targeted as a potential dump site for high-level nuclear waste, the kind that…

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Media

What reporting on three city councils teaches me

By Marty Durlin

For the past year and a half, I’ve been reporting weekly on municipal government in three rural Western Colorado towns….

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Lisa Mcintyre via Unsplash
Lion double set trap, Photo NDOW
beartooth books, Red Lodge, Montana, John Clayton
Photograph by Ken Cheung, Courtesy of Unsplash

Focusing on natural resources and public lands in the West

Writers on the Range provides articles about the economic, cultural and legislative change taking place in the west with focus on natural resources and public lands. Broadly our topics are public lands, outdoor recreation, water and economic institutions serving the west.

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Writers on the Range needs your support

Help us support journalists and newspapers across the West. Writers on the Range provides editorial to Western newspapers in the intermountain west. Our topics include public lands, outdoor recreation, water and economic institutions serving the west. Our writers are westerners from 10 states with diverse opinions and insight. As a 501c3 corporation as defined and approved by the IRS, donations to Writers on the Range are tax deductible.

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Writers and photographers wanted

We are looking for diverse writers, writers of color, women and young people. The West needs diverse voices. Topics should be broad enough for Western Readers across our intermountain territory of Montana, Idaho, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, and Wyoming. Our readers also care about the Great Plains and the eastern parts of California, Oregon, and Washington.

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Larmer was the first editor of Writers on the Range after it landed at HCN in 1998, he went on to become publisher/editor of High Country News (HCN) 2003-2020, and is currently senior development director HCN. Larmer is also on the advisory board of Writers on the Range.

Writers on the Range grew out of the West’s public lands, growth, and culture wars of the 1990s. At the time, environmentalists were at loggerheads with the timber, mining, oil and gas and ranching industries that had dominated and shaped land-use and rural communities for decades. 

Meanwhile, a flood of newcomers poured into the region’s urban areas and smaller towns, stressing their social and economic fabrics beyond recognition. How could the West sort through these contentious issues in a civil manner?

The answer was to give voice to a wide range of people from the region itself.  Writers with different backgrounds, espousing new ideas, were put front and center on the region’s opinion pages.

After a brief run as a think tank, Writers on the Range landed on the front porch of High Country News in 1997.  High Country News is the well-known, highly awarded publication that covers the west’s diverse natural and human communities.  It was a perfect match.

Soon dozens of news outlets subscribed.  Over the next 20 years, Writers on the Range published fresh columns from writers and thinkers across the ideological spectrum, provoking thought, generating debate, and defining the possibilities of a better west.

 It was truly a grassroots opinion service and, now as an independent non-profit organization, is still so today.

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Once a week you’ll receive an email with a link to our weekly column along with profiles of our writers, beside quirky photos submitted from folks like you. Don’t worry we won’t sell our list or bombard you with daily mail.