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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Delicate Arch Utah, image credit Solo Travel Goals, via Unsplash
Elk in pine forests on South Rim of Grand Canyon/courtesy NPS
Bison by the Midway Geyser Basin in Yellowstone National Park

Focusing on natural resources and public lands in the West

Writers on the Range provides articles about the economic, cultural and legislative change taking place in the west with focus on natural resources and public lands. Broadly our topics are public lands, outdoor recreation, water and economic institutions serving the west.

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Help us support journalists and newspapers across the West. Writers on the Range provides editorial to Western newspapers in the intermountain west. Our topics include public lands, outdoor recreation, water and economic institutions serving the west. Our writers are westerners from 10 states with diverse opinions and insight. As a 501c3 corporation as defined and approved by the IRS, donations to Writers on the Range are tax deductible.

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Writers and photographers wanted

We are looking for diverse writers, writers of color, women and young people. The West needs diverse voices. Topics should be broad enough for Western Readers across our intermountain territory of Montana, Idaho, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, and Wyoming. Our readers also care about the Great Plains and the eastern parts of California, Oregon, and Washington.

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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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