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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

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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,…

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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

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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

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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…

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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

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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

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There’s such a thing as trail etiquette

By Marjorie “Slim” Woodruff

The uppermost switchback on the Bright Angel Trail in Grand Canyon National Park is eight feet wide. Yet the last…

Bright Angel Trail, NPS/Ty Karlovetz

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Women shouldn’t be second-class citizens

By Crista Worthy

I felt like a second-class citizen when the Supreme Court ended the constitutional right to abortion last summer. After a…

Idaho State Capitol, Wikimedia commons

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Requiem for the Joshua tree

By Pepper Trail

Disheveled, gangly, the Joshua tree is surely one of the West’s strangest — and most recognizable — plants.  Named by…

Conglomerate Mesa, Photo by Louis Medina, Friends of the Inyo

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John Fielder, the man who loved natural beauty

By Betsy Marston

If you’ve ever bought a calendar or coffee table book featuring the grandeur of Colorado’s 14’ers, the stunning color photographs…

John Fielder, credit Gary Wockner/Save the Colorado

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Wildland firefighters need our support

By Gregory Mcnamee

At any given moment during this smoky summer of 2023, hundreds of wildfires were blazing in the United States —…

Calwood fire, near Jamestown Colorado, by Malachi Brooks, via Unsplash

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What others are saying See More

The Daily Sentinel of Grand Junction, Colorado places a premium on content that examines management of public lands and natural resources. We’re big fans of Writers on the Range. The contributors come from all walks of life, but their column always hit home with our readers, for whom access to public lands is an important part of the lifestyle in western Colorado. Cutbacks to the newsroom have seriously hampered our coverage of the environment. Most often these stories are best told by people who have first-hand experience dealing with a particular challenges — from loving favorite trails to death to rebuilding coal communities or threats to the sagebrush sea. Writers on the Range consistently identifies problems and solutions in a thorough and engaging way. We need more of this kind of advocacy journalism on our opinion pages because it fosters understanding and dialogue about the unique living conditions in the American West.

Andy Smith, Opinion Page Editor
Grand Junction Sentinel, Grand Junction, CO

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