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Most journalists and academics attribute the rise of wildfires in the western United States to the USDA Forest Service's successful fire-elimination policies of the twentieth century. However, in Fire Management in the American West, Mark Hudson argues that although a century of suppression did indeed increase the hazard of wildfire, the responsibility does not lie with the USFS alone. The roots are found in the Forest Service's relationships with other, more powerful elements of society--the timber industry in particular.

Drawing on correspondence both between and within the Forest Service and the major timber industry associations, newspaper articles, articles from industry outlets, and policy documents from the late 1800s through the present, Hudson shows how the US forest industry, under the constraint of profitability, pushed the USFS away from private industry regulation and toward fire exclusion, eventually changing national forest policy into little more than fire policy.

More recently, the USFS has attempted to move beyond the policy of complete fire suppression. Interviews with public land managers in the Pacific Northwest shed light on the sources of the agency's struggles as it attempts to change the way we understand and relate to fire in the West.

Fire Management in the American West will be of great interest to environmentalists, sociologists, fire managers, scientists, and academics and students in environmental history and forestry.

Leaping waterfalls, struggling through rocky shallows, only the strongest salmon survive to spawn a new generation. These remarkable fish seem to be pure nature, unfathomable, all instinct. But are they? For more than a century biologists have tried to unlock the mystery of salmon we know. For sociologist Rik Scarce, salmon represent an opportunity to probe the relationship of science, society, and nature.

About Pacific salmon -- a game fish and food source that is protected and manages for economic and environmental  abundance -- Scarce writes, "What other living thing receives such extensive attention from science and society, is used in so many ways, yet retains so much of what we would like  to think is its 'wild' character?" He shows how political, bureaucratic, and economic forces have directed salmon science for their own purposes and how control remains a central feature in salmon biology.

Identifying a countertrend rooted in environmental activism, Scarce also argues that an ecocentric perspective is gaining ground even as pressures mount simultaneously to save endangered salmon populations and to bring every last salmon to market. Thus, while external forces control much of the biologists' work, a movement is underway to free biology from political and economic pressures. In rich, ethnographic detail, Scarce develops this portrait of a science struggling with nature and itself. The old-line "fisheries biologists" tell how they work under immense pressure to unravel the unknowns of salmon existence to fulfill objectives of politically-motivated funding agencies. In contrast, the new breed of "conservation biology" researchers struggles to maintain the genetic diversity of salmon populations while minimizing the ways humans determine the fate of the salmon.

Fishy Business provides new ways for regarding about human interactions with other species, from appealing ones like wolves, whales, and redwood tress to less popular ones like snail darters and kangaroo rats. Society struggles to decide what parts of nature matter and why. Ultimately, Scarce argues, nature is a social product: what shall we make of it?

Learn how Fran and Frederick Hamerstrom worked to save the greater prairie chicken from extinction in the Wisconsin Historical Society Press’s new book for young readers, "Fran and Frederick Hamerstrom: Wildlife Conservation Pioneers." Fran and Frederick grew up in New England, and married in 1935. They both loved nature and wanted to dedicate their lives to understanding and preserving wildlife. As students of the famous naturalist, Aldo Leopold, they learned about new ways for humans to think about saving land for animals. Fran was a brave, outgoing woman who cared more about interacting with animals than wearing pretty dresses. Frederick was a calm, thoughtful man who loved to study and conduct research. Together, they spent over thirty years mentoring many future scientists, and working to save the greater prairie chicken, and other animals, from extinction. "Fran and Frederick Hamerstrom: Wildlife Conservation Pioneers" is the newest addition to the Society Press’s Badger Biographies Series.

Throughout the Americas, a boom in oil, gas, and mining development has pushed the extractive frontier deeper into Indigenous territories. Centering on a long-term study of Enron and Shell’s Cuiabá pipeline, From Enron to Evo traces the struggles of Bolivia’s Indigenous peoples for self-determination over their lives and territories. In his analysis of their response to this encroaching development, author Derrick Hindery also sheds light on surprising similarities between neoliberal reform and the policies of the nation’s first Indigenous president, Evo Morales.

Drawing upon extensive interviews and document analysis, Hindery argues that many of the structural conditions created by neoliberal policies—including partial privatization of the oil and gas sector—still persist under Morales. Tactics employed by both Morales and his neoliberal predecessors utilize the rhetoric of environmental protection and Indigenous rights to justify oil, gas, mining, and road development in Indigenous territories and sensitive ecoregions.

Indigenous peoples, while mindful of gains made during Morales’s tenure, are increasingly dissatisfied with the administration’s development model, particularly when it infringes upon their right to self-determination. From Enron to Evo demonstrates their dynamic and pragmatic strategies to cope with development and adversity, while also advancing their own aims.

Offering a critique of both free-market piracy and the dilemmas of resource nationalism, this is a groundbreaking book for scholars, policy-makers, and advocates concerned with Indigenous politics, social movements, environmental justice, and resistance in an era of expanding resource development.

North Americans have reached a socioenvironmental tipping point where social transformation has become necessary to secure a stable and desirable future. As hurricanes destroy coastal areas that once hosted schools and homes, petroleum refineries choke nearby communities and their parks, and pipeline construction threatens water rights for indigenous peoples, communities are left to determine how to best manage and mitigate environmental loss.

In this new collection, a range of contributors—among them researchers, practitioners, organizers, and activists—explore the ways in which people counter or cope with feelings of despair, leverage action for positive change, and formulate pathways to achieve environmental justice goals. These essays pay particular attention to issues of race, class, economic liberalization, and geography; place contemporary environmental struggles in a critical context that emphasizes justice, connection, and reconciliation; and raise important questions about the challenges and responses that concern those pursuing environmental justice.

Contributors include the volume editors, Carol J. Adams, Randall Amster, Jan Inglis, Eileen Delehanty Pearkes, Zoë Roller, and Michael Truscello.

Like many industrialized regions, the Philadelphia metro area contains pockets of environmental degradation: neighborhoods littered with abandoned waste sites, polluting factories, and smoke-belching incinerators. However, other neighborhoods within and around the city are relatively pristine. This eye-opening book reveals that such environmental inequalities did not occur by chance, but were instead the result of specific policy decisions that served to exacerbate endemic classism and racism. 

 

From Workshop to Waste Magnet presents Philadelphia’s environmental history as a bracing case study in mismanagement and injustice. Sociologist Diane Sicotte digs deep into the city’s past as a titan of American manufacturing to trace how only a few communities came to host nearly all of the area’s polluting and waste disposal land uses. By examining the complex interactions among economic decline, federal regulations, local politics, and shifting ethnic demographics, she not only dissects what went wrong in Philadelphia but also identifies lessons for environmental justice activism today. 

 

Sicotte’s research tallies both the environmental and social costs of industrial pollution, exposing the devastation that occurs when mass quantities of society’s wastes mix with toxic levels of systemic racism and economic inequality. From Workshop to Waste Magnet is a compelling read for anyone concerned with the health of America’s cities and the people who live in them.