front cover of America's Private Forests
America's Private Forests
Status And Stewardship
Constance Best and Laurie A. Wayburn; Foreword by John Gordon
Island Press, 2001

Nearly 430 million acres of forests in the United States are privately owned, but the viability, and indeed the very existence, of these forests is increasingly threatened by population growth, sprawling urbanization, and patchwork development. Scientists, policymakers, and community leaders have begun to recognize the vital role of private forests in providing society with essential goods and services, from sustainable timber supplies to clean water. Yet despite the tremendous economic and ecological importance of private forests, information about their status and strategies for their protection have been in short supply.

America's Private Forests addresses that shortcoming, presenting extensive data gathered from diverse sources and offering a concise overview of the current status of privately owned forests in the United States. As well as describing the state of private forests, the book sets forth detailed information on a wide range of approaches to conservation along with an action agenda for implementing those strategies likely to be most effective. The book:

  • identifies the major threats to private forests in the United States
  • considers barriers to conservation
  • outlines the available tools and programs for promoting conservation
  • presents a "road map" to guide collective efforts for the conservation of private forests and their native biodiversity

Based on extensive research of existing literature as well as interviews and consultation with leading forestry and conservation experts, America's Private Forests is a unique sourcebook that offers a solid basis for discussion of threats to private forests along with an invaluable compendium of potential solutions. It will serve as an invaluable reference for all those working to conserve and steward forest resources, including forest owners and their consultants, conservation organizations, and agency personnel, as well as researchers and students involved with issues of forestry, biodiversity, land use, and conservation.

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Ancient Forests of the Pacific Northwest
Elliott A. Norse; Foreword by Peter H. Raven; The Wilderness Society
Island Press, 1990
Ancient Forests of the Pacific Northwest provides a global context for what is happening in the Pacific Northwest, analyzing the remaining ancient forest and the threats to it from atmospheric changes and logging. It shows how human tampering affects an ecosystem, and how the Pacific Northwest could become a model for sustainable forestry worldwide.
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Balsam Fir
A Monographic Review
E.V. Bakuzis and H.L. Hansen
University of Minnesota Press, 1965

Balsam Fir was first published in 1965. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

Professors Bakuzis and Hansen, with the assistance of a number of co-authors of individual chapters, present an exhaustive survey of the literature on the balsam fir, providing a coherent picture of the species and its place in nature and forestry practice. The balsam fir is used extensively in the pulp and paper industry, and it is known to millions as a traditional Christmas tree. In North America it is a major tree species in Canada, in the northeastern United States, and in the Great Lakes region.

In the search of the literature, over 2000 sources were consulted and considerably more than half of them are cited in the book. The references, organized in an ecological framework, cover the period from the seventeenth century to the present. The authors have reviewed and integrated these data in a unified, but multipurposed, book. In the integration of the source material the authors also made contributions of their own. The book contains the following chapters: Botanical Foundations, Geography and Synecology, Ecological Factors, Microbiology, Entomology, Reproduction, Stand Development, Growth and Yield, and Utilization. Appendixes list fungi and myxomycetes and insects associated with balsam fir. There are 30 illustrations, including a frontispiece drawing by the noted nature artist Francis Lee Jaques.

The book will appeal to a wide range of readers specifically concerned with forestry, including research workers, educators, entomologists, pathologists, and managing foresters, as well as conservationists and wildlife biologist in general.

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Breaking New Ground
Gifford Pinchot; Introduction by Char Miller and V. Alaric Sample
Island Press, 1998

Vigorous, colorful, bold and highly personal, Breaking New Ground is the autobiography of Gifford Pinchot, founder and first chief of the Forest Service. He tells a fascinating tale of his efforts, under President Theodore Roosevelt, to wrest the forests from economic special interests and to bring them under management for multiple- and long-range use. His philosophy of "the greatest good for the greatest number over the longest time" has become the foundation upon which this country's conservation policy is based.

In a new introduction for this special commemorative edition, Char Miller of Trinity University and V. Alaric Sample of the Pinchot Institute for Conservation trace the evolution of Gifford Pinchot's career in the context of his personal life and the social and environmental issues of his time. They illuminate the courage and vision of the man whose leadership is central to the development of the profession of forestry in the United States. Breaking New Ground is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding the basis of our present national forest policy, and the origins of the conservation movement.

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The Business of Sustainable Forestry
Strategies For An Industry In Transition
Michael B. Jenkins and Emily T. Smith; Foreword by Jonathan Lash Stephan Schmidheiny
Island Press, 1999
A range of powerful forces -- increasing demand for wood, uncertain and decreasing supply, increasing environmental pressures, and growing markets for environmentally certified wood -- are changing the way the forest products industry conducts business. Forward-thinking firms have recognized the significance of these forces and are developing a new business model, one that will not only sustain revenues, but can ensure the long-term health of the forests upon which the industry depends.The Business of Sustainable Forestry integrates and analyzes a series of 21 case studies of industry leaders carried out by the Sustainable Forestry Working Group. The motivations of the pioneering firms studied are as varied as their characteristics, yet each has made significant progress. The authors of this book argue that the operations that have been most succeessful are those that have integrated sustainable forestry principles and practices into their overall corporate strategy. The book: describes the forces that are pushing the industry toward sustainability presents an overview of the new techniques and technologies that are making sustainable forestry more feasible than ever presents in clear, engaging prose company profiles that demonstrate both the promise of and the obstacles to sustainable forest management gives a clear-eyed look at practices such as certification and their capacity to transform the forest products market provides conclusions drawn from the cases by Stuart Hart of the University of North Carolina and Matt Arnold of the Management Institute for Environment and Business offers a succinct set of lessons learned The Business of Sustainable Forestry is the first book to present a composite snapshot of the business of sustainable forestry and the lessons learned by early adopters in form and language accessible to the general business reader. Forest and natural resource managers, forest products industry managers, and students and academics in schools of business and forestry will find the book a unique and valuable guide to an industry in transition.
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Community Forestry in the United States
Learning from the Past, Crafting the Future
Mark Baker and Jonathan Kusel
Island Press, 2003

Across the United States, people are developing new relationships with the forest ecosystems on which they depend, with a common goal of improving the health of the land and the well-being of their communities. Practitioners and supporters of what has come to be called community forestry are challenging current approaches to forest management as they seek to end the historical disfranchisement of communities and workers from forest management and the all-too-pervasive trends of long-term disinvestment in ecosystems and human communities that have undermined the health of both.

Community Forestry in the United States is an analytically rigorous and historically informed assessment of this new movement. It examines the current state of community forestry through a grounded assessment of where it stands now and where it might go in the future. The book not only clarifies the state of the movement, but also suggests a trajectory and process for its continued development.

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Conserving Forest Biodiversity
A Comprehensive Multiscaled Approach
David B. Lindenmayer and Jerry F. Franklin
Island Press, 2002

While most efforts at biodiversity conservation have focused primarily on protected areas and reserves, the unprotected lands surrounding those area—the "matrix"—are equally important to preserving global biodiversity and maintaining forest health. In Conserving Forest Biodiversity, leading forest scientists David B. Lindenmayer and Jerry F. Franklin argue that the conservation of forest biodiversity requires a comprehensive and multiscaled approach that includes both reserve and nonreserve areas. They lay the foundations for such a strategy, bringing together the latest scientific information on landscape ecology, forestry, conservation biology, and related disciplines as they examine:

  • the importance of the matrix in key areas of ecology such as metapopulation dynamics, habitat fragmentation, and landscape connectivity
  • general principles for matrix management
  • using natural disturbance regimes to guide human disturbance
  • landscape-level and stand-level elements of matrix management
  • the role of adaptive management and monitoring
  • social dimensions and tensions in implementing matrix-based forest management
In addition, they present five case studies that illustrate aspects and elements of applied matrix management in forests. The case studies cover a wide variety of conservation planning and management issues from North America, South America, and Australia, ranging from relatively intact forest ecosystems to an intensively managed plantation.

Conserving Forest Biodiversity presents strategies for enhancing matrix management that can play a vital role in the development of more effective approaches to maintaining forest biodiversity. It examines the key issues and gives practical guidelines for sustained forest management, highlighting the critical role of the matrix for scientists, managers, decisionmakers, and other stakeholders involved in efforts to sustain biodiversity and ecosystem processes in forest landscapes.

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Creating a Forestry for the 21st Century
The Science Of Ecosytem Management
Edited by Kathryn A. Kohm and Jerry F. Franklin; Foreword by Jack Ward Thomas
Island Press, 1997

Over the past decade, a sea change has occurred in the field of forestry. A vastly increased understanding of how ecological systems function has transformed the science from one focused on simplifying systems, producing wood, and managing at the stand-level to one concerned with understanding and managing complexity, providing a wide range of ecological goods and services, and managing across broad landscapes.

Creating a Forestry for the 21st Century is an authoritative and multidisciplinary examination of the current state of forestry and its relation to the emergent field of ecosystem management. Drawing upon the expertise of top professionals in the field, it provides an up-to-date synthesis of principles of ecosystem management and their implications for forest policy. Leading scientists, including Malcolm Hunter, Jr., Bruce G. Marcot, James K. Agee, Thomas R. Crow, Robert J. Naiman, John C. Gordon, R.W. Behan, Steven L. Yaffee, and many others examine topics that are central to the future of forestry:

  • new understandings of ecological processes and principles, from stand structure and function to disturbance processes and the movement of organisms across landscapes
  • challenges to long-held assumptions: the rationale for clearcutting, the wisdom of short rotations, the exclusion of fire
  • traditional tools in light of expanded goals for forest landscapes
  • managing at larger spatial scales, including practical information and ideas for managing large landscapes over long time periods
  • the economic, organizational, and political issues that are critical to implementing successful ecosystem management and developing institutions to transform knowledge into action
Featuring a 16-page center section with color photographs that illustrate some of the best on-the-ground examples of ecosystem management from around the world, Creating a Forestry for the 21st Century is the definitive text on managing ecosystems. It provides a compelling case for thinking creatively beyond the bounds of traditional forest resource management, and will be essential reading for students; scientists working in state, federal, and private research institutions; public and private forest managers; staff members of environmental/conservation organizations; and policymakers.
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Defining Sustainable Forestry
Edited by Greg Aplet, Nels Johnson, Jeffrey T. Olson, and V. Alaric Sample; Foreword by Edward O. Wilson
Island Press, 1993

Before the transition in forestry can be made from conventional approaches of the past century to the ecosystem approach of the next, a consensus must be reached on the meaning of "sustainable forestry." Defining Sustainable Forestry presents the results of a national conference convened by The Wilderness Society, American Forests, and the World Resources Institute to help establish a common framework upon which to guide the future development of forestry.

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Eastern Old-Growth Forests
Prospects For Rediscovery And Recovery
Edited by Mary Byrd Davis; Foreword by John Davis
Island Press, 1996

Eastern Old-Growth Forests is the first book devoted exclusively to old growth throughout the East. Authoritative essays from leading experts examine the ecology and characteristics of eastern old growth, explore its history and value -- both ecological and cultural -- and make recommendations for its preservation.

The book provides a thorough overview of the importance of old growth in the East including its extent, qualities, and role in wildlands restoration. It will serve a vital role in furthering preservation efforts by making eastern old-growth issues better known and understood.

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Environmental Ethics and Forestry
Peter List
Temple University Press, 2000
During the  past twenty-five years, North American forestry has received increasingly vigorous scrutiny.  Critics including the environmentalists, environmental scientists, representatives of public interest groups, and many individual citizens have expressed concerns about forestry's basic assumptions and methods, as well as its  practical outcomes. Criticism has centered on such issues as the exploitation of forests for timber production, the reduction and fragmentation of old-growth habitats, the destruction of biodiversity, the degradation of grasslands through grazing practices, lack of government attention to recreation facilities, silvicultural methods like clearcutting and  the use of herbicides and pesticides, the exportation of industrial forestry techniques to other parts of the world, and the use of public monies to provide services for private resource companies, as in the creation of logging roads.

This rising tide of public scrutiny has led many foresters to suspect that their "contract" with society to manage forests using their best professional judgment has been undermined. Some of these  professionals, as well as some of  their critics, have begun to reexamine their old beliefs and to look for new ways of practicing forestry. Part of this reflective process has entailed new directions in environmental ethics and environmental philosophy.

This reader brings together some of  the new thinking in this area. Here students of the applied environmental and natural resource sciences, as well as the interested general reader, will discover a rich sampling of  writings in environmental ethics and philosophy as they apply to forestry. Readings focus on basic ethical systems in forestry and forest management, philosophical issues in forestry ethics, codes of  ethics in forestry and related natural resource sciences such as fisheries science and wildlife biology, Aldo Leopold's land ethic in forestry, ethical advocacy and whistleblowing in government resource agencies, the ethics of new forestry, ecoforestry, and  public debate in forestry, as well as ethical issues in global forestry such as the responsibilities of forest corporations, environmentalists, and individual wood consumers.

The volume contains materials from the founders of forestry ethics, such as Bernhard Fernow, Giford Pinchot, John Muir, and Aldo Leopold; from such organizations as the Society of American Foresters, the Wildlife Society, the  American Fisheries Society, Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, and the Ecoforesters group, in addition to the writings by a variety of well-known environmental philosophers and foresters, including Holmes Rolston, Robin Attfield, Lawrence Johnson, Michael McDonald, Paul Wood, James E. Coufal, Raymond Craig, Kristin Shrader-Frechette, Jeff DeBonis, Jim L. Bowyer, Alasdair Gunn, Doug Daigle, Alan G. McQuillan, Stephanie Kaza, Alan Drengson, Duncan Taylor, and Kathleen Dean Moore.
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Fire Ecology of Pacific Northwest Forests
James K. Agee
Island Press, 1993

The structure of most virgin forests in the western United States reflects a past disturbance history that includes forest fire. James K. Agee, an expert in the emergent field of fire ecology, analyzes the ecological role of fire in the creation and maintenance of natural western forests, focusing primarily on forest stand development patterns. His discussion of the natural fire environment and the environmental effects of fire is applicable to a wide range of temperate forests.

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Flames in Our Forest
Disaster Or Renewal?
Stephen F. Arno and Stephen Allison-Bunnell
Island Press, 2002

Shaped by fire for thousands of years, the forests of the western United States are as adapted to periodic fires as they are to the region's soils and climate. Our widespread practice of ignoring the vital role of fire is costly in both ecological and economic terms, with consequences including the decline of important fire-dependent tree and undergrowth species, increasing density and stagnation of forests, epidemics of insects and diseases, and the high potential for severe wildfires.

Flames in Our Forest explains those problems and presents viable solutions to them. It explores the underlying historical and ecological reasons for the problems associated with our attempts to exclude fire and examines how some of the benefits of natural fire can be restored Chapters consider:

  • the history of American perceptions and uses of fire in the forest
  • how forest fires burn
  • effects of fire on the soil, water, and air
  • methods for uncovering the history and effects of past fires
  • prescribed fire and fuel treatments for different zones in the landscape

Flames in Our Forest presents a new picture of the role of fire in maintaining forests, describes the options available for restoring the historical effects of fires, and considers the implications of not doing so. It will help readers appreciate the importance of fire in forests and gives a nontechnical overview of the scientific knowledge and tools available for sustaining western forests by mimicking and restoring the effects of natural fire regimes.

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Forest Patches in Tropical Landscapes
Edited by John Schelhas and Russell Greenberg
Island Press, 1996
While tropical forests are being cleared at an alarming rate, the clearing is rarely complete and is often not permanent. A considerable amount of tropical forest exists as remnants that have significant value both for the conservation of biological diversity and for meeting the needs of local people.

This volume brings together world-renowned scientists and conservationists to address the biological and socio-economic value of forest remnants and to examine practical efforts to conserve those remnants. An outgrowth of a year-long study by the policy program at the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center, Forest Patches in Tropical Landscapes provides a broad overview of theory and practice, and will help foster both interdisciplinary research and more effective approaches to tropical conservation and development.
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From Backwoods to Boardrooms
The Rise of Institutional Investment in Timberland
Daowei Zhang
Oregon State University Press, 2021
Since the early 1900s, forestland ownership has gone through two major structural changes in the United States and other parts of the world: the accumulation of industrial timberlands between the 1900s and 1980s and, since then, the shift from industrial to institutional ownership. From Backwoods to Boardrooms explores the history and economics of these two structural changes with emphasis on the latter. These ownership transformations have impacted tens of millions of acres of private landholdings and billions of investment dollars. Industrial structure, forest management and policy, research and development, community welfare, and forest sustainability have all been directly affected.   

Through a historical examination of key events and players, prevailing management philosophies, public policy, and institutional factors, Daowei Zhang searches for an economic explanation and assesses the impact of these ownership revolutions with a three-pronged approach. First, he explains why industrial firms were able to profit from owning forestlands, and how the shift to institutional ownership came about. Second, he compares private timberland investments and public equity investments with respect to risk-adjusted returns and other dimensions of interest to investors and forest managers, including alignment of interests, capacity to exploit market inefficiencies, and their forest management and conservation records. Finally, he provides thoughtful commentary on the future of institutional timberland investments and global forest sustainability.   
From Backwoods to Boardrooms is essential reading for forest managers, investors, and anyone interested in understanding the workings of the modern forest sector and the future of forest sustainability.

 
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The Green Archipelago
Forestry in Preindustrial Japan
Conrad Totman
Ohio University Press, 1998

This inaugural volume in the Ohio University Press Series in Ecology and History is the paperback edition of Conrad Totman’s widely acclaimed study of Japan’s environmental policies over the centuries.

Professor Totman raises the critical question of how Japan’s steeply mountainous woodland has remained biologically healthy despite centuries of intensive exploitation by a dense human population that has always been dependent on wood and other forest products. Mindful that in global terms this has been a rare outcome, and one that bears directly on Japan’s recent experience as an affluent, industrial society, Totman examines the causes, forms, and effects of forest use and management in Japan during the millennium to 1870. He focuses mainly on the centuries after 1600 when the Japanese found themselves driven by their own excesses into programs of woodland protection and regenerative forestry.

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The Ground at My Feet
Sustaining a Family and a Forest
Ann Stinson
Oregon State University Press, 2021
Ann Stinson grew up on her family’s tree farm in southwestern Washington state, on a ridge above the Cowlitz River. After building a life in New York and Portland, she returned home at the age of fifty, when her brother’s death from cancer left her manager and co-owner of three hundred acres planted in Douglas fir, western red cedar, and ponderosa pine.

The Ground at My Feet is a memoir about loss and grief as well as a portrait of a family, a region, and an industry. Combining personal story and research, Stinson weaves essays, poems, history, and science into a rich and layered account of life in a family forest in the Pacific Northwest. She maps interactions between the land and its people over two centuries: the Cowlitz peoples, homesteaders, and several generations of logging families who have worked the property. She follows her family’s logs as they become lumber for fence boards and suburban homes, touring a local cedar mill and traveling with her father to visit mills in Japan.

Stinson adds a landowner’s voice to conversations about the human tendency to demand more of the land than it can sustain. With its uniquely personal view of the Pacific Northwest’s timber and forestry heritage, The Ground at My Feet is an engaging addition to the literature of the landscape and ecology of the West.
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Haywire
Discord in Maine's Logging Woods and the Unraveling of an Industry
Andrew Egan
University of Massachusetts Press, 2022

Logging in the northern forest has been romanticized, with images of log drives, plaid shirts, and bunkhouses in wide circulation. Increasingly dismissed as a quaint, rural pastime, logging remains one of the most dangerous jobs in the United States, with loggers occupying a precarious position amid unstable markets, expanding global competition, and growing labor discord. Examining a time of transition and decline in Maine’s forest economy, Andrew Egan traces pathways for understanding the challenges that have faced Maine’s logging community and, by extension, the state’s forestry sector, from the postwar period through today.

Seeking greater profits, logging companies turned their crews loose at midcentury, creating a workforce of independent contractors who were forced to purchase expensive equipment and compete for contracts with the mills. Drawing on his own experience with the region’s forest products industry, interviews with Maine loggers, media coverage, and court documents, Egan follows the troubled recent history of the industry and its battle for survival.

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Hidden Forest, The
The Biography of an Ecosystem
Jon R. Luoma
Oregon State University Press, 2006

The tallest species of spruce, hemlock, fir, cedar, and pine trees on earth coexist in the old growth of the H. J. Andrews Experimental Forest in Oregon’s Cascade Range. Set aside as a living laboratory by the U.S. Forest Service in 1948, the 16,000 acres represent a vital scientific endeavor: the long-term study of a single contained ecosystem. Here, for the first time, researchers from an enormous range of disciplines—forest scientists, botanists, entomologists, wildlife ecologists, soil biologists, and others—have assembled to examine the role of every working element in the life of a forest.

In The Hidden Forest, veteran science writer Jon Luoma offers an absorbing account of how these scientists came to recognize the importance of natural forest ecosystems and how their research is revolutionizing forest management.

Luoma takes readers into the hidden forest where researchers have discovered a host of species previously unknown to science, and interactions in the forest ecosystem that no one previously imagined. He describes projects dealing with the forest canopy, rotting logs, insects, fungi, wildlife, streams, and the effects of flood, fire, clear cutting, and volcanic eruption. And he tells the human story behind the research, capturing the shared excitement and wonder of scientific discovery. Along the way, Luoma provides a short course in such complex issues as forest succession, biodiversity, and the politics of forestry.

In a new foreword, Jerry Franklin discusses the importance of dedicated, long-term research sites and comments on new discoveries that have emerged from forest ecosystem research since The Hidden Forest was first published.

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The Making of the Northwest Forest Plan
The Wild Science of Saving Old Growth Ecosystems
K. Norman Johnson
Oregon State University Press, 2023
Tree sitters. Logger protests. Dying timber towns. An iconic species on the brink. The Timber Wars consumed the Pacific Northwest in the late 1980s and early 1990s and led political leaders to ask scientists for a solution. The Northwest Forest Plan was the result.

For most of the twentieth century, the central theme of federal forest management in the Pacific Northwest had been logging old-growth forests to provide a sustained yield of timber. During the 1970s and 1980s, however, studies by young scientists highlighted the destructive impact of that logging on northern spotted owls, salmon, and the old-growth ecosystem itself. Combining this new science with environmental laws like the Endangered Species Act, environmental activists obtained court injunctions to stop old-growth logging on federal land, setting off a titanic struggle to meet conservation imperatives while also enabling the timber harvests that provided employment for tens of thousands of people. That effort led to the creation of the Northwest Forest Plan, which sharply and abruptly shifted the goal of federal forest management toward conserving the species and ecosystems of old-growth forests and the streams that run through them.

In this book, three of the scientists who helped craft that change tell the story as they know it: the causes, development, adoption, and effects of the Northwest Forest Plan. The book also incorporates short commentaries and histories from key figures—including spotted owl expert Eric Forsman—and experiences from managers who implemented the plan as best they could. Legal expert Susan Jane M. Brown helped interpret court cases and Debora Johnson turned spatial data into maps. The final chapters cover the plan’s ongoing significance and recommendations for conserving forest and aquatic ecosystems in an era of megafires and climate change.
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More Tree Talk
The People, Politics, and Economics of Timber
Ray Raphael
Island Press, 1994

More Tree Talk is an insightful and compelling look at the human dimension of the challenges facing forestry. First published in 1981, Tree Talk was widely hailed as the most even-handed and well-written introduction to forestry issues available. More Tree Talk is an entirely revised edition of that classic volume that brings the book up-to-date with the current situation.

Like the original, More Tree Talk features a running narrative punctuated by individual portraits that personalize the issues. It translates political and academic aspects of forestry into human terms, focusing on those whose lives and livelihoods depend on the outcome of the debates currently raging -- old-time woodsmen, loggers, naturalists, restoration workers, timber company executives.

Ray Raphael explores the new forestry practices, theories, and controversies that have emerged in the past decade as he addresses problems of a declining resource base and increasing regulatory policies. He examines the impact of ecological and economic concerns on rural communities, and considers the possibility of large structural changes in the ways in which timber companies operate. Throughout, he emphasizes that without an understanding of the economic and political factors that interfere with good forest management, all the scientific knowledge -- and all the best intentions of on-site workers -- will come to no avail.

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The Once and Future Forest
A Guide To Forest Restoration Strategies
Leslie Jones Sauer; Foreword by Ian McHarg; Andropogon Associates
Island Press, 1998

Developed by the pioneering landscape design firm of Andropogon Associates, world-renowned for their innovative approach to integrating environmental protection and restoration with landscape architecture and design, The Once and Future Forest is a guidebook for restoring and managing natural landscapes. Focusing on remnant forest systems, it describes methods of restoring and linking forest fragments to recreate a whole landscape fabric.

The book begins by explaining the history and current situation of forest ecosystems in the eastern United States. Following that is an in-depth examination of the restoration process, with thorough descriptions of ecological strategies for landscape management along with specific examples of how those strategies have been implemented in various sites around the country. The final section provides hands-on information about the many specific details that must be considered when initiating and implementing a restoration program. All aspects of the restoration process are considered, including: Water -- opportunities for increasing infiltration, reducing pollutants, promoting habitat values Ground -- methods of protecting existing vegetation, removing fill, rebuilding soils Plants -- strategies and procedures for planting, maintenance, propagation Wildlife -- guidelines for preserving wildlife resources, management techniques to favor selected specie.

The Once and Future Forest presents a comprehensive approach to assessing sites, detailed guidelines for determining management goals, and a thorough overview of appropriate management and restoration techniques. It is an important guide for professional planners and landscape architects, government agency personnel at all levels, land managers, scientists involved in restoration work, and citizen activists who wish to do something constructive about our deteriorating forest patches.

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The Rain Forests of Home
Profile Of A North American Bioregion
Edited by Peter K. Schoonmaker, Bettina von Hagen, and Edward C. Wolf; Foreword by Jerry F. Franklin Patricia Marchak
Island Press, 1997

Stretching from the redwoods of California to the vast stands of spruce and hemlock in southeast Alaska, coastal temperate rain forests have been for thousands of years home to one of the highest densities of human settlements on the continent. Given its mild climate, magnificent scenery, and abundant natural resources, the region should continue to support robust economies and vibrant communities for many years to come. However, the well-being of this region is increasingly threatened by diminishing natural capital, declining employment in traditional resource-based industries, and outward migration of young people to cities.

The Rain Forests of Home brings together a diverse array of thinkers -- conservationists, community organizers, botanists, anthropologists, zoologists, Native Americans, ecologists, and others -- to present a multilayered, multidimensional portrait of the coastal temperate rain forest and its people. Joining natural and social science perspectives, the book provides readers with a valuable understanding of the region's natural and human history, along with a vision of its future and strategies for realizing that vision.

Authors describe the physical setting and examine the geographic and evolutionary forces that have shaped the region since the last glacial period, with individual chapters covering oceanography, climate, geologic processes, vegetation, fauna, streams and rivers, and terrestrial/marine interactions. Three chapters cover the history of human habitation, including an examination of what is known about pre-European settlement, a consideration of the traditions of local and indigenous knowledge, and a description of the environmental and cultural upheaval brought by European explorers and settlers. The book concludes with an exploration of recent economic and cultural trends, regional and local public policy, information gathering, and the need for integrating local knowledge into decision making.

Interspersed among the chapters are compelling profiles of community-level initiatives and programs aimed at restoring damaged ecosystems, promoting sustainable use of resources, and fostering community-based economic development. The case studies describe what coastal residents are doing to combine environmental conservation with socioeconomic development, and document some of the most innovative experiments in sustainable development now underway in North America.

The Rain Forests of Home offers for the first time a unified description of the characteristics, history, culture, economy, and ecology of the coastal temperate rain forest. It is essential reading for anyone who lives in or cares about the region.

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The Redwood Forest
History, Ecology, and Conservation of the Coast Redwoods
Edited by Reed F. Noss; Save-the-Redwoods League
Island Press, 2000

Evidence is mounting that redwood forests, like many other ecosystems, cannot survive as small, isolated fragments in human-altered landscapes. Such fragments lose their diversity over time and, in the case of redwoods, may even lose the ability to grow new, giant trees.

The Redwood Forest, written in support of Save-the-Redwood League's master plan, provides scientific guidance for saving the redwood forest by bringing together in a single volume the latest insights from conservation biology along with new information from data-gathering techniques such as GIS and remote sensing. It presents the most current findings on the geologic and cultural history, natural history, ecology, management, and conservation of the flora and fauna of the redwood ecosystem. Leading experts -- including Todd Dawson, Bill Libby, John Sawyer, Steve Sillett, Dale Thornburgh, Hartwell Welch, and many others -- offer a comprehensive account of the redwoods ecosystem, with specific chapters examining:

  • the history of the redwood lineage, from the Triassic Period to the present, along with the recent history of redwoods conservation
  • life history, architecture, genetics, environmental relations, and disturbance regimes of redwoods
  • terrestrial flora and fauna, communities, and ecosystems
  • aquatic ecosystems
  • landscape-scale conservation planning
  • management alternatives relating to forestry, restoration, and recreation.

The Redwood Forest offers a case study for ecosystem-level conservation and gives conservation organizations the information, technical tools, and broad perspective they need to evaluate redwood sites and landscapes for conservation. It contains the latest information from ground-breaking research on such topics as redwood canopy communities, the role of fog in sustaining redwood forests, and the function of redwood burls. It also presents sobering lessons from current research on the effects of forestry activities on the sensitive faunas of redwood forests and streams.

The key to perpetuating the redwood forest is understanding how it functions; this book represents an important step in establishing such an understanding. It presents a significant body of knowledge in a single volume, and will be a vital resource for conservation scientists, land use planners, policymakers, and anyone involved with conservation of redwoods and other forests.

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Salmon and Acorns Feed Our People
Colonialism, Nature, and Social Action
Kari Marie Norgaard
Rutgers University Press, 2019
Finalist for the 2020 C. Wright Mills Award from the Society for the Study of Social Problems

Since time before memory, large numbers of salmon have made their way up and down the Klamath River. Indigenous management enabled the ecological abundance that formed the basis of capitalist wealth across North America. These activities on the landscape continue today, although they are often the site of intense political struggle. Not only has the magnitude of Native American genocide been of remarkable little sociological focus, the fact that this genocide has been coupled with a reorganization of the natural world represents a substantial theoretical void. Whereas much attention has (rightfully) focused on the structuring of capitalism, racism and patriarchy, few sociologists have attended to the ongoing process of North American colonialism. Salmon and Acorns Feed Our People draws upon nearly two decades of examples and insight from Karuk experiences on the Klamath River to illustrate how the ecological dynamics of settler-colonialism are essential for theorizing gender, race and social power today. 
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Towards Forest Sustainability
Edited by David B. Lindenmayer and Jerry F. Franklin
Island Press, 2003

The world's montane forests are vitally important for conservation and water catchment. Because logging regimes have significant impacts on biodiversity as well as water quality and water quantity, the management of these forests has often been a major source of conflict amongst rural communities, government agencies, and conservationists. Although much information on ecologically sustainable managment practices is now available, further organizational change and policy tranformation is needed to see a transition to sustainable practices inplemented on the ground.

Towards Forest Sustainability contains practical essays by some of the world's leading forests ecologists and managers from the United States, Canada, Finland, Sweden, Australia, and New Zealand. The authors describe the changes that have taken place in forest management- highlighting what worked, what didn't, and the lessons that have been learned.

This unique collection of essays documents the drivers of the change in the logging industry and the resulting outcomes, both the good and the bad. The book provides real-world insights from an international perspective into government policy, industrial concerns, and conservation and biodiversity issues.

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front cover of Trees, Why Do you Wait?
Trees, Why Do you Wait?
America's Changing Rural Culture
Richard Critchfield
Island Press, 1991

Richard Critchfield, author of the best-selling books Villages and An American Looks at Britain, examines the inescapable link between the decline of America's rural roots and the decay of our cities. Trees, Why Do You Wait? is a moving oral history chronicling the changes taking place in rural America. Through it, we meet real people of the heartland and feel the suffering and the strength in their relationship to the land.

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front cover of Wild Forests
Wild Forests
Conservation Biology And Public Policy
William S. Alverson, Donald M. Waller, and Walter Kuhlmann
Island Press, 1994

Wild Forests presents a coherent review of the scientific and policy issues surrounding biological diversity in the context of contemporary public forest management. The authors examine past and current practices of forest management and provide a comprehensive overview of known and suspected threats to diversity.

In addition to discussing general ecological principles, the authors evaluate specific approaches to forest management that have been proposed to ameliorate diversity losses. They present one such policy -- the Dominant Use Zoning Model incorporating an integrated network of "Diversity Maintenance Areas" -- and describe their attempts to persuade the U.S. Forest Service to adopt such a policy in Wisconsin.

Drawing on experience in the field, in negotiations, and in court, the authors analyze the ways in which federal agencies are coping with the mandates of conservation biology and suggest reforms that could better address these important issues. Throughout, they argue that wild or unengineered conditions are those that are most likely to foster a return to the species richness that we once enjoyed.

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front cover of The Wisdom of the Spotted Owl
The Wisdom of the Spotted Owl
Policy Lessons For A New Century
Steven Lewis Yaffee
Island Press, 1994

The controversy over the management of national forests in the Pacific Northwest vividly demonstrates the shortcomings of existing management institutions and natural resource policies. The Wisdom of the Spotted Owl explores the American policymaking process through the case of the spotted owl -- a case that offers a striking illustration of the failure of our society to cope with long-term, science-intensive issues requiring collective choices.

Steven Lewis Yaffee analyzes the political and organizational dynamics from which the controversy emerged and the factors that led to our stunning inability to solve it. He examines the state of resource management agencies and policy processes, providing insight into questions such as:

  • What caused the extreme polarization of opinion and lack of communication throughout the 1980s and early 1990s?
  • How can the inadequate response of government agencies and the failure of the decisionmaking process be explained?
  • What kinds of changes must be made to enable our resource policy institutions to better deal with critical environmental issues of the 1990s and beyond?
By outlining a set of needed reforms, the book will assist those who are involved in re-creating natural resource agencies and public policy processes for the challenges of the next century. In explaining the policymaking process -- its realities and idiosyncrasies -- The Wisdom of the Spotted Owl provides a framework for understanding policies and institutions, and presents a prescription for change to allow for more effective handling of current and future environmental problems.
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