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Erasing history, one park at a time

By Ernie Atencio

As the philosopher George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” It’s true that…

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Must we kill one species to save another?

By Writers on the Range

Barred owls, with their vivid brown stripes, are acting like bullies of the forest in the Northwest, driving their smaller…

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Protect the firefighters who protect our homes and forests

By Riva Duncan

You probably don’t see wildland firefighters on the job because they usually work in remote areas. But with wildfires moving…

Federal firefighters digging a fire line, photo courtesy National Interagency Fire Center

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Energy dominance harms our public lands

By Barbara Vasquez

I live in Jackson County, in northern Colorado, where hundreds of inactive and abandoned oil wells litter the landscape. Not…

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For waste and ineficiency you can’t beat ethanol

By Writers on the Range

Corn ethanol, also known as grain alcohol, has been burned in gasoline engines and human stomachs since before Henry Ford…

An ethanol production plant in South Dakota. Credit: photos by jim

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The threat of tariffs is already my problem

By Crista Worthy

Unless revoked or substantially reduced to what they are now, 30 percent for 90 days, President Trump’s tariffs will still…

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Public lands are a national treasure and must not be sold

By Tracy Stone-Manning

Public lands are one of our country’s great equalizers. It doesn’t matter how much money you have—a billionaire and a…

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“De-extinction” is a fool’s errand

By Pepper Trail

To breathless media coverage, a company called Colossal Biosciences now claims to have produced three genetically engineered pups of the…

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ICE is eroding the rule of law

By Benjamin Waddell

“I got lucky,” José told me. “Because they got the wrong person.” José, 28, who did not give his last…

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Solar panels have more than proven themselves

By Andrew Carpenter

I’d never heard of “net metering” until my electric bill hit $600 last February. Desperate for a way to reduce…

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Rural Colorado county gets ready for wildfire

By Dave Marston

When La Plata County in southwestern Colorado needed a director of emergency management in 2021, they found a winner in…

Shawna Legarza Kennebec Trail Race 2024

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When reality weighs you down

By Richard Knight

A lot of us feel hopeless today. There’s the return of energy dominance as a federal goal, which places oil,…

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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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