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The Complexity of Color in the Environmental Movement

By Ernie Atencio

 This summer was a time of reckoning about race in every sector of American life, and many of us are…

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The West’s Population Grows and Churns

By Jonathan Thompson

“Americans are still mobile and still moving West..”

Photograph by Brooke Cagle, courtesty of Unsplash

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Fanning the Flames of Hate in Oregon

By Pepper Trail

“The present we are now enduring is the climate-change future that we have been warned about for decades.”

Photograph by Alex Radelich, Courtesy of Unsplash

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Houses Must be Built to Withstand Wildfire

By Stephen Pyne Jack Cohen

That the scene has become familiar makes it no less wrenching:  A distraught couple searches through the ash, char, and…

U.S. Forest Service Photo 2007. Grass Valley Fire in Southern California’s San Bernadino Mountains

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A Clear Warning About the Colorado River

By Dave Marston

For the West this summer, the news about water was grim.  In some parts of California, it didn’t rain for…

Photograph by Ken Cheung, Courtesy of Unsplash

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These Fires will Happen Again and Again

By Char Miller

“This pattern of build-and-burn will continue..”

Photograph by Dawn Armfield, Courtesy of Unsplash

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Covid-19 And Recreation: Too Much Poop, Too Many People

By Todd Wilkinson

“Though conservation groups continue to point fingers at logging, mining and ranching, they’ve been slow to acknowledge impacts from outdoor recreation.”

Photograph by Diogo Tavares, Courtesy of Unsplash

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A Goldmine by a Salmon Fishery is a Terrible Idea

By Bonnie Gestring

The Bristol Bay salmon fishery is a renewable resource; the legacy of the Pebble Mine promises perpetual pollution

Photograph by Austin Neill, Courtesy of Unsplash

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School + Pandemic = High Anxiety

By 'Asta Bowen

“Before opening those classrooms to the lion that lurks inside, let’s ask ourselves one last time: Whose life is it worth? “

Photograph by Javier Trueba, Courtesy of Unsplash

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Colorado Needs Wolves

By Rob Edward

“…we can efficiently and affordably undo our ancestors’ shortsighted decision to erase wolves from America’s wild place.”

Photograph by Robert Larsson, Courtesy of Unsplash

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Wolves and lots of People Don’t Mix

By Marj Perry

“Wolf proponents see western Colorado as an empty wilderness, not acknowledging the combustion engine, or Interstate-70.”

Photograph by Courtney Clayton, Courtesy of Unsplash

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If You Like Fish and Birds, Hug a Cow

By Sharon and Pat O’Toole

“Eighty-five percent of grazing lands — think sagebrush steppe or high desert landscapes — are not suitable for any other type of food production”

Photograph by Angela Mulligan, Courtesy of 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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