Columns

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

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

Don’t bet against redband rainbow trout

Photograph by Justin Miles

Wyoming may be too much like America used to be

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

You can explore the West and escape the crowds

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

Killing wildlife to see who wins

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.

It all began with pizza

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

Housing prices in the West are over the moon.

“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

We blame the trees, but whose fault is it?

“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

The last thing we need is a gold mine

“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

Pumping up fear along the Colorado River

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

Some Western states join the rush to suppress voting

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

Water can be wrung out too much

“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.