Writers on the Range
Wildlife watching has been getting a free ride
There’s a new initiative in Wyoming that’s changing the face of wildlife conservation funding, and it’s already seen huge success in its first year.
It’s...
Old bones can be a small town’s movie stars
The prehistoric past can perk up the present. When woolly mammoth bones were found in my hometown in Wisconsin years ago, they became the...
Let’s tell the truth about those big, bad wolves
The return of wolves to the West has always been contentious, and the deaths last fall of more than 40 cattle in western Colorado...
We need to act now to fight wildfires
For the 2021 fire season, the writing is on the wall. The West, despite a few days of intense winter, is far drier than...
When no home is affordable, where do you live?
It’s a common story: Candace McNatt of Durango, in southern Colorado, kept losing bidding wars to buy a house. She finally settled on a...
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 one meeting he said...
Gun nut has a warning
When I was a young man growing up in rural Oregon, there was a term for people like me: “gun nut.”
By my 20s I...
Restoring the land can feel like a lot of fun
Driving back to Colorado State University with a van full of students after a day of work- ing to heal some beat-up land north...
When a skunk goes after your garden
Skunks love autumn as our backyard gardens fill up with ripe vegetables. But in my northern New Mexico corn patch, that meant a determined...
The West badly needs a restoration economy
Farmington, a city of 45,000 in the northwestern corner of New Mexico, has run on a fossil fuel economy for a century. It is...
Atmospheric rivers endanger the West
Moab, Utah, gets just eight inches of rain per year, yet rainwater flooded John Weisheit’s basement last summer. Extremes are common in a desert:...
As Lake Powell dwindles, wonders open up
On May 9, protected by neoprene, I bobbed around in a flooded canyon in Utah’s Lake Powell. The reservoir had fallen below 35% full,...
