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Call it Bindweed or thistle – Writers on the Range just won’t die

By Dave Marston

It sprouted again during a fall hike in 2019. Betsy, Steve Mandell, his wife, Terri, and I, agreed that Writers on the Range deserved to live again.

Photo by Denys Nevozhai on Unsplash

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Don’t bet against redband rainbow trout

By Brian Sexton

Photograph by Justin Miles

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Wyoming may be too much like America used to be

By Bruce Palmer

May 31 By Bruce Palmer If you’re hankering for a true Western vacation, come to the Cowboy State, where we…

Grand Tetons at the end of a Wyoming Road, photograph by Leslie Cross, courtesy of Unsplash

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You can explore the West and escape the crowds

By Molly Absolon

Here’s the dilemma: You want to explore the West’s huge treasure of public land, but you don’t want to be…

Lake Serene Washington, Photo by Jamie Coupaud, courtesy of Unsplash

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Killing wildlife to see who wins

By Ted Williams

Predators do kill game and livestock, but no game species in the United States is suppressed by predation, and overpopulated species like elk and deer lack the predators needed to maintain their health and that of native ecosystems.

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It all began with pizza

By Laura Roberts McHenry

In the mid-1960s, my dad served on the school board in Cortez, in rural southern Colorado.  He recalled that at…

Photograph by Helena Lopez, courtesy of Unsplash

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Housing prices in the West are over the moon.

By Jonathan Thompson

“But now the Zoom Boom-fueled market fire is spreading beyond the “best places” into the once-affordable bastions of working class neighborhoods, the bedroom communities, rural ranchettes and even trailer parks.”

Photograph by Phil Hearing, courtesy of Unsplash

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We blame the trees, but whose fault is it?

By Pepper Trail

“But it’s questionable that any amount of “thinning” could protect Ashland from a wind-driven firestorm coming out of the watershed.”

Photograph by Romain Le Teuff, courtesy of Unsplash

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The last thing we need is a gold mine

By Marcie Carter

“For us, the Nimíipuu, the value of the land, fish, wildlife and other natural resources will always be worth more than gold.”

Photograph by Curioso Photography, courtesy of Unsplash

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Pumping up fear along the Colorado River

By George Sibley

Some Colorado River tribulations today remind me of a folk story: A young man went to visit his fiancé and…

Photograph by JC Peacock, courtesy of Unsplash

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Some Western states join the rush to suppress voting

By Jeff Milchen

Colorado’s elections are a bipartisan success story, so when Major League baseball responded to Georgia’s new voting restrictions by moving the…

Image by Unseen Histories, courtesy of Unsplash

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Water can be wrung out too much

By Writers on the Range

“But when Western cities grow, they look everywhere for more water, with little regard for the rivers they drain. “

Santa Fe River below Santa Fe Municipal Water Treatment Plant. Photograph courtesy of Allen Best.

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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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