Writers on the Range

Heartbreaking, dehumanizing, toxic — these aren’t the words most people would pick to describe the boreal forest of Canada. But in the far reaches of northern Alberta, this description seems accurate to me. This lush forest of larch, aspen and spruce –– a place where wood bison used to roam –– has degenerated to ravaged […]

Utah is ground zero this year for the attempt by some Western states to claim federal lands. In September, when Southern Utah University hosted a debate on the controversial proposal, close to 250 people packed the hall as two professors, Bob Keither and Dan McCool, argued that however messy its oversight, the federal government should […]

My anxiety-prone 7-year-old son, Elias, was so nervous about his first baseball game that he felt sick. “Those are called butterflies,” I said. To help him out, I took him into the backyard and pitched some balls, all the while reciting a litany of “great athletes who got nervous” stories. I told him that the […]

A little-known battle in this country’s marijuana war is underway in a small town of 1,500 in western Colorado, known – if at all — for its underground coal mines, 12 wineries, a microbrewery, organic vegetables and fruit, and, its perfect climate for growing pot. The town is Paonia, and this November, its registered voters […]

For climate activists, this feels like the last moment. The huge marches in New York and other cities around the world were a reflection, among other things, of desperation. How loud must we scream before our so-called leaders will listen? How many hundreds of thousands must fill the streets before any of those leaders act?  […]

There is an unfortunate stigma attached to frozen meat, a widely held assumption that it’s inferior to fresh meat. This prejudice runs deep enough that fast-food chain Wendy’s promises that its burger meat is “always fresh, never frozen.” This belief, and all the retail efforts that cater to it, are misguided. If processed correctly, frozen […]

When I set out to report on the effort to save a historic chalet in the rugged backcountry of Washington’s Olympic National Park, I thought the toughest part would be the 13-mile hike. What I found after six hours on the trail, however, was a bizarre blockade on press freedom, the likes of which I’d […]

You’re a big game hunter in the wilds of Wyoming, Montana or Idaho, and a grizzly is headed right for you, just like a freight train. Do you reach for bear spray, or use your rifle? For more than a decade, state and federal agencies have said hunters should use a firearm only if bear […]

I was reading the newspaper at my computer desk when a huge explosion rattled the window of my home office. I leaped several inches off the chair, sure that my husband, who was working on our camp trailer, had been blown to smithereens by a propane tank explosion. I ran to the front window and […]

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell came to California’s Mojave Desert this September to announce a multi-agency effort to boost renewable energy development in the desert. But first, she had to go on a hike. “We went out into the Big Morongo Preserve,” she told reporters. “Fifteen, 20 minutes from here, there are wetlands. Wetlands, and 254 […]

Some Eugene, Oregon, residents hate their town’s dilapidated Civic Stadium. They’d like to see it torn down and replaced with a department store. Other residents love the stadium and have happy memories of watching minor league baseball with friends and family. But everyone agrees the stadium is now an eyesore. It’s one of the few […]

Trail dogs — that’s what trail workers across the country call themselves. It tells you what life is like for the thousands of young men and women who spend their summers tending to the travel corridors on our country’s public lands. Trail dogs really do work like dogs, cutting back brush, sawing through trees and […]

The brown paper bag I carried out of the bookstore wasn’t there for the sake of discretion.  Truth be told, the bookstore refuses to handle plastic anymore.  Ideally, the clerk told me, it was on the verge of going entirely bagless, so I was lucky to be handed a brown paper sack. But it was raining, […]

Sometimes there are anniversaries that we should remember but not celebrate. This month marks such an occasion: A hundred years ago this September, Martha, the last passenger pigeon, died in the Cincinnati Zoo.  On the Midwestern frontier, billions of the birds had once gathered, so many they formed “a feathered river across the sky.” By […]

In 1832, when Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall was pondering the fate of Baptist missionary Samuel Worcester, who’d been jailed by Georgia state militia for preaching the Christian gospel to Cherokee Indians, little did Marshall know that his ruling would one day reroute rivers, legalize hundreds of Indian casinos from coast to coast, and […]

Hunting fascinates me, and I read everything I can about it. So I was taken aback to read recently that in my state of Washington, there are 16,000 fewer hunters than there were five years ago. Another story focused on the failure of our justice system to curb rampant poaching, and I began to wonder […]

Westerners celebrated two birthdays worth noting toward the end of summer, but most paid attention to only one, the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act. The other was the 50th anniversary of the start of construction of the Fryingpan-Arkansas Project in Colorado, which eventually moved a lot of water from the Colorado River Basin to […]

Congress still hasn’t figured out how to pay for wildfires. Choked by partisan bickering and entrenched refusals to compromise, the 113th Congress has passed the fewest pieces of legislation of any Congress in the past two decades — just 108 significant laws, compared to nearly 170 per session from 1995 to 2010. One of the […]

Some interests potentially inconvenienced by the Endangered Species Act are so terrified of the law that it often succeeds best when threatened but not invoked. So it may be with ongoing efforts to save the greater sage grouse. In 2011, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service gave states, private landowners, the Forest Service and the […]