Ditch “inefficiencies” give us wetlands
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Imagine Westerners waking up one morning only to discover that many of their most cherished wetlands have dried up, gone….
Since 1917, five generations have lived along the Animas Consolidated Ditch outside of Durango, CO, Patty Zink pictured, courtesy Dave Marston
MoreWhat really affects hunting in the West
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A disgruntled hunter wrote a Writers on the Range opinion recently about Westerners getting fed up with the many out-of-staters…
MoreGoats can be a forest’s best friend
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Goats are particularly good at one thing: Eating. Unlike a horse or cow that leaves noxious weeds behind, goats eat…
Jonathan Bartley and Adrian Lacasse
MoreRestoring the land can feel a lot like fun
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Driving back to Colorado State University with a van full of students after a day of working to heal some…
Autumn at a cattle ranch in Colorado near Ridgway – County Road 12, Craig Zerbe Photo
MoreThe West is an exploiter’s paradise
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High on a mesa where everyone can see it, a trophy house is going up in the northern Colorado valley…
Outside Capitol Reef, photo courtesy of Michael Shoemaker
MoreHard choices for the Colorado River
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The seven Colorado River states – Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming – face a daunting mid-August…
MorePlenty of food, but not for all farmworkers 
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On a summer morning in southern Idaho, the day breaks early, before 6 a.m. The air is stale, never fully…
Farm workers harvesting yellow bell peppers near Gilroy, California.
MoreWant to farm? Get a cash register
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In 1991, when Lee Bradley started farming near Paonia in the North Fork Valley of Colorado, he was hired to…
Image credit: P.j. Briscoe
MoreThis rancher has radical ideas about water
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If Jim Howell, a fourth-generation rancher in Western Colorado, has a guru, he’s Allan Savory, the champion of intensive cattle…
MoreLooking back to when water was plentiful
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During his 50 years in rural western Colorado, Jamie Jacobson has seen a lot of flooding. While caretaking a farm…
MoreUrban-rural divide is alive and well
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“The annual Western Stock Show puts cowboy hats in high-end restaurants and strip joints alike.”
Photograph by Allen Best, outside of Akron, CO
MoreThe West badly needs a restoration economy
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“Restoration work is not fixing beautiful machinery … It is accepting an abandoned responsibility,”
Photograph courtesy of Allan Nash, open pit coal mine in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin
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