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Let’s get to restoration and halt the roadless rodeo

By Ben Long

Grounded in common sense, the Roadless Rule that the Trump administration wants to eliminate has not been controversial for 24…

Hermosa Creek Roadless Area from the Colorado Trail, Photo Courtesy Bertrand Poitier

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By now, it’s a bizarre tradition of the West

By Dennis Hinkamp

Going into my 26th Burning Man, I admit I was crestfallen at the news that “Midnight Poutine” was not returning. The…

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Rare wolf faces hard road to recovery

By Ted Williams

Most people are familiar with the gray wolf, which was reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park in 1995, and has since…

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Some hikers leave plenty of traces

By Marjorie “Slim” Woodruff

Part of my job as a Grand Canyon educator is picking up stuff a hiker drops or leaves behind next…

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The push is on to strip big trees from our national forests

By Mitch Friedman

It didn’t get much notice, but President Trump has turbocharged logging on public lands in ways that are likely to…

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The wolf-killing case that could change Wyoming

By Wendy Keefover

The Wyoming man who deliberately ran down a wolf with his snowmobile in 2024 didn’t face any consequences, unless you…

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The West is on fire as Washington fans the flames

By Tracy Stone-Manning

This summer, millions of Americans are hiking, camping, fishing and making lifelong memories in our national parks, forests and other…

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Beer and clothing in second-place Aspen

By Angus M. Thuermer Jr.

In December, Teton County, Wyoming, residents learned they were the wealthiest people in the country, making an average of $471,751…

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Coal gets a boost as renewables are gutted

By Jonathan Thompson

A few years back, my friend Norm told me that when he was growing up in northern New Mexico in…

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The slippery slope of e-bike access

By Marjorie “Slim” Woodruff

When I visited Bryce Canyon National Park recently, the shared paths were crowded with electric motorcycles. They say they are…

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Public land goes back on the chopping block

By T. A. Barron

The radical notion of selling off public lands is back. And this time it seems that only the Congress can…

T. A. Barron

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Americans face a test of community and citizenship

By Stephen Trimble

Each of us Americans conducts our daily life in bubbles, all shockingly siloed from each other. These days, we don’t…

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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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