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Don’t blame the Upper Basin states

By George Sibley

But the Bureau of Reclamation has regularly and faithfully released to the Lower Basin, from Powell Reservoir, the Colorado River Compact and Mexican Treaty allotments –- 8.23 million acre-feet only dropping a little below those allotments half a dozen times since Powell began to fill in the 1960s.

Bryan Egner US Dept. of energy Glen Canyon Dam 2018

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A dangerous game of chicken on the colorado river

By Kyle Roerink

Central Arizona Project, Arizona, with homes. Image credit US Bureau of Reclamation

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A tale of two western counties

By Dave Marston

“Delta County has a long history of turning away stuff that ends up in Montrose County,” says Delta County Commissioner Don Suppes.

May 26, 2021 – Byron Kominek, owner of Jack’s Solar Garden, tills the soil at the farm in Longmont, Colo. Jack’s Solar Garden is a 1.2-MW, five-acre community solar farm and is the largest agrivoltaic research project in the U.S. The solar project was designed and built by Namasté Solar. (Photo by Werner Slocum / NREL)

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Let’s Not Squander the Miracle of Yellowstone

By Todd Wilkinson

Photo credit Doug Smith, National Park Service

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Stand up for Public access

By Mark Squillace

Eighty-year-old Roger Hill used to go fishing on the Arkansas River in Colorado. But he sometimes had to duck baseball-size…

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Fire · Water

Spring is coming too soon

By Pepper Trail

Photo by redcharlie via Unsplash

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Our border with Mexico teems with contradictions

By Laura Pritchett

What I found is the volunteers here are the unsung heroes doing the real work of humanitarian aid — and who, by the very nature of what they do, often prefer to remain silent.

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Imagine a great river, flowing free

By Dave Marston

Some environmental groups and water honchos have sponsored a “Rewilding of Glen Canyon” contest, with the winner getting $4,000 “and…

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When will black history become a part of American History?

By Wayne Hare

Photo Credit: Unknown author, Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

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I’m lucky because I can take the bus

By Rebecca Johnson

Call me crazy, but I enjoy public transportation, especially since I’ve moved West where I work at various ski town…

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Guess who has outsized clout on public lands?

By Jonathan Thompson

This may be a surprising story. It begins with a working group trying to save the last native bighorn sheep…

Image by Pete Nuij, courtesy of Unsplash

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Oh, Utah! When will you learn?

By Mike Kaplan

A new video released by Utah Gov. Spencer Cox argues the big, semi-annual trade show called Outdoor Retailer should come…

Delicate Arch Utah, image credit Solo Travel Goals, via Unsplash

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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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