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Hunting is a valuable tool in managing lions

By Andrew Carpenter

Asking the public to decide if it’s a good idea to ban hunting mountain lions and bobcats is no way…

Mountain lion, courtesy Writers on the Range

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Bobcats need protection, not killing for their pelts

By Ted Williams

Unlike the rest of modern wildlife management, killing bobcats is unregulated, driven not by science but by fur prices. We’re…

Bobcat caught in a trap, photo courtesy of Animal Wellness Action

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How did so much stuff pile up?

By Rich Wandschneider

A few years ago, I turned a carport into a bedroom. But first I had to empty out the books,…

Adam Winger, Unsplash, Logan Utah

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Building a huge park is anything but easy

By Dave Marston

Marc Katz is a retired entrepreneur who lives part-time in Durango, Colorado, a town of 19,000 people who all seem…

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A candy bar fueled the Iron Horse Bicycle Classic

By Dave Marston

If you don’t know much about the Iron Horse bike race that begins in the town of Durango in southwestern…

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In Wyoming, tormenting a wolf is not a big deal

By Wendy Keefover

It’s legal in Wyoming to chase coyotes and run over them with snowmobiles, but recently, a man used his snowmobile…

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An invitation to play the climate-change game

By Pepper Trail

Let’s play a game, the climate-change game that every living thing on Earth has no choice but to play, starting…

Dead Horse State Park, Moab, Utah, Andres Haro, Unsplash

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Pepper Trail: There’s so much worth saving

By Jonathan Romeo

For a long time, climate change was largely perceived as a distant threat. But Oregon biologist Pepper Trail, 70, who…

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We need to know avalanches inside and out

By Molly Absolon

There’s a fine line between learning from the mistakes of others and shaming people for their ignorance. Twelve people have…

Image by Will Turner, via Unsplash

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Culture wars and an embattled Utah monument

By Stephen Trimble

Utah’s Bears Ears National Monument rarely leaves the news. The political tussle over this stunning expanse of red rock canyons…

Rainbow over Cheesebox Butte- Highway 95, photo by Stephen Trimble

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We know now that free land wasn’t free

By Rebecca Clarren

There’s a place in South Dakota, about 25 miles north of Wall Drug, that some locals still call “Jew Flats.”…

Badlands National Park, South Dakota, Joshua Hubbard via Unsplash

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Freed wolves move into their old niche

By Clint McKnight

What was it like for 10 captured Oregon wolves when Colorado Parks and Wildlife opened their crates on a December…

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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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