Columns

Categories

Archives

Live rough and know the real world

By Jacob Richards

Guides in the outdoor industry inevitably come up with collective nicknames for customers. On horseback they’re “dudes,” on the river…

More

Pulling thistles, sowing hope

By Susan Marsh

For the past few years I’ve participated in “Thistle Thursdays,” targeting a popular trail near Jackson, Wyoming. The weekly weed…

musk-thistle-bloom

More

Farewell to two radicals with a common goal – changing the West

By Ernie Atencio

The West lost two larger-than-life conservationists this year, and while I considered both friends, they couldn’t have been more different….

Sid Goodloe and wife Cheryl

More

The West has too many visiting hunters

By Andrew Carpenter

Hunting may be losing popularity nationally, but in the West the number of hunters is climbing. According to the U.S….

Dan Vigueria, Paonia, Colorado, Grizzly Longbows LLC

More

Creative builders get rural housing done

By Dave Marston

Here’s a statistic to be unhappy about: Colorado and Utah host the fifth and sixth most expensive housing markets in…

Community Rebuilds houses in Moab UT, courtesy Emily Niehaus

More

When a skunk goes after your garden

By RIchard Rubin

Skunks love autumn as our backyard gardens fill up with ripe vegetables. But in my northern New Mexico corn patch,…

Bryan Padron via Unsplash

More

Are beavers always the answer? Not really

By Ted Williams

Beavers, through their assiduous dam building, can recharge groundwater and provide habitat for fish and wildlife. In the Pacific Northwest,…

More

Goats can be a forest’s best friend

By Dave Marston

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

More

Let’s blow the whistle on public-land abusers

By Rob Pudim

Dozens of TVs, refrigerators, stoves, washers, dryers and abandoned cars had either been gunshot, torched or both. This place of…

Erosion Gulch, image credit Rob Pudim

More

Richard Montrose Obituary

By Writers on the Range

Richard “Dick” Montrose, 80, longtime real estate business owner of Western Colorado and avid outdoorsman died suddenly at his home…

More

Report from Burning Man 2023

By Dennis Hinkamp

After a quiet year of preparation and premature eulogies, Burning Man roared into the news this August. There were unplanned…

BM Build Day 3/credit Dennis Hinkamp

More

We can help shape this Utah monument

By Jonathan Thompson

When President Joe Biden restored the original boundaries of both Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears national monuments in 2021, public-land…

Grand Staircase Escalante, Unsplash/Halie West

More

What others are saying See More

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.

Subscribe to our Newsletter

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.