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Willing workers are right at the border

By Benjamin Waddell

Photo by Barbara Zandoval via Unsplash

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Hands off the rocks

By Marjorie “Slim” Woodruff

Hikers are flooding our public lands, so I ask the question: Why can’t people just leave the poor rocks alone?…

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Hard lessons from the border

By Gary Paul Nabhan

Animals have been blocked from migration, their food chains disrupted. Now, exotic weeds, insects and diseases can use the lengthy scar as a nick point for invasion, ultimately disrupting far more than what human border-crossers can do. Photo by Greg Bulla on Unsplash

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As Lake Powell dwindles, wonders open up

By Tim Treuer

It would take us another day and a half of increasingly arduous travel to finally enter Lake Powell

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When immortals die

By Pepper Trail
Photo by Joshua Earl on Unsplash

Giant sequoias come as close to immortality as living organisms can. Many live over a thousand years despite nature’s challenges. So…

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How to love the bear’s world

By John Horning
Photo by Becca on Unsplash

When a bear kills a person in the wild, that’s no reason to enact laws making it easier to kill bears. Rather respect that bears are wild creatures and be cautious when in their territor

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Looking back to when water was plentiful

By Dave Marston

During his 50 years in rural western Colorado, Jamie Jacobson has seen a lot of flooding. While caretaking a farm…

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What do we owe wildland firefighters?

By Jonathon Golden

Vacancies, of course, limit how much federal firefighters can do. If Western communities want to be protected, they need to ensure that their firefighters receive better pay and benefits.

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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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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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