Results by title
12 books match the query 'United States. Forest Service'
A Hunger for High Country
One Woman’s Journey to the Wild in Yellowstone CountrySusan Marsh
Oregon State University Press, 2014
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Between Two Fires
A Fire History of Contemporary AmericaStephen J. Pyne
University of Arizona Press, 2015
From a fire policy of prevention at all costs to today's restored burning, Between Two Fires is America's history channeled through the story of wildland fire management. Stephen J. Pyne tells of a fire revolution that began in the 1960s as a reaction to simple suppression and single-agency hegemony, and then matured into more enlightened programs of fire management. It describes the counterrevolution of the 1980s that stalled the movement, the revival of reform after 1994, and the fire scene that has evolved since then.
Pyne is uniquely qualified to tell America’s fire story. The author of more than a score of books, he has told fire’s history in the United States, Australia, Canada, Europe, and the Earth overall. In his earlier life, he spent fifteen seasons with the North Rim Longshots at Grand Canyon National Park.
In Between Two Fires, Pyne recounts how, after the Great Fires of 1910, a policy of fire suppression spread from America’s founding corps of foresters into a national policy that manifested itself as a costly all-out war on fire. After fifty years of attempted fire suppression, a revolution in thinking led to a more pluralistic strategy for fire’s restoration. The revolution succeeded in displacing suppression as a sole strategy, but it has failed to fully integrate fire and land management and has fallen short of its goals.
Today, the nation’s backcountry and increasingly its exurban fringe are threatened by larger and more damaging burns, fire agencies are scrambling for funds, firefighters continue to die, and the country seems unable to come to grips with the fundamentals behind a rising tide of megafires. Pyne has once again constructed a history of record that will shape our next century of fire management. Between Two Fires is a story of ideas, institutions, and fires. It’s America’s story told through the nation’s flames.
Pyne is uniquely qualified to tell America’s fire story. The author of more than a score of books, he has told fire’s history in the United States, Australia, Canada, Europe, and the Earth overall. In his earlier life, he spent fifteen seasons with the North Rim Longshots at Grand Canyon National Park.
In Between Two Fires, Pyne recounts how, after the Great Fires of 1910, a policy of fire suppression spread from America’s founding corps of foresters into a national policy that manifested itself as a costly all-out war on fire. After fifty years of attempted fire suppression, a revolution in thinking led to a more pluralistic strategy for fire’s restoration. The revolution succeeded in displacing suppression as a sole strategy, but it has failed to fully integrate fire and land management and has fallen short of its goals.
Today, the nation’s backcountry and increasingly its exurban fringe are threatened by larger and more damaging burns, fire agencies are scrambling for funds, firefighters continue to die, and the country seems unable to come to grips with the fundamentals behind a rising tide of megafires. Pyne has once again constructed a history of record that will shape our next century of fire management. Between Two Fires is a story of ideas, institutions, and fires. It’s America’s story told through the nation’s flames.
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Black Woman in Green
Gloria Brown and the Unmarked Trail to Forest Service LeadershipGloria D. Brown
Oregon State University Press, 2020
From an unlikely beginning as an agency transcriptionist in her hometown of Washington, DC, Gloria Brown became the first African American woman to attain the rank of forest supervisor at the US Forest Service. As a young widow with three children, she transferred to Missoula, Montana, and embarked on a remarkable journey, ultimately leading the Siuslaw National Forest in Oregon and later the Los Padres in California. The story of Brown’s career unfolds against the backdrop of a changing government agency and a changing society.
As scholars awaken to the racist history of public land management and the ways that people of color have been excluded from contemporary notions of nature and wilderness, Brown’s story provides valuable insight into the roles that African Americans have carved out in the outdoors generally and in the field of environmental policy and public lands management specifically. Drawing on her powerful communication and listening skills, her sense of humor, and her willingness to believe in the basic goodness of humanity, Brown conducted civil rights trainings and shattered glass ceilings, all while raising her children alone.
Written in an engaging and accessible style with historian Donna Sinclair, Brown’s story provides a fascinating case study for public administration and contributes to a deeper understanding of the environmental and civil rights movements of the twentieth century, particularly the role that racial discrimination has played in national forests, parks, and other wilderness spaces. It also highlights issues of representation in the federal government, women’s history, the history of the American West, and literature associated with African American experiences in predominately white societies.
As scholars awaken to the racist history of public land management and the ways that people of color have been excluded from contemporary notions of nature and wilderness, Brown’s story provides valuable insight into the roles that African Americans have carved out in the outdoors generally and in the field of environmental policy and public lands management specifically. Drawing on her powerful communication and listening skills, her sense of humor, and her willingness to believe in the basic goodness of humanity, Brown conducted civil rights trainings and shattered glass ceilings, all while raising her children alone.
Written in an engaging and accessible style with historian Donna Sinclair, Brown’s story provides a fascinating case study for public administration and contributes to a deeper understanding of the environmental and civil rights movements of the twentieth century, particularly the role that racial discrimination has played in national forests, parks, and other wilderness spaces. It also highlights issues of representation in the federal government, women’s history, the history of the American West, and literature associated with African American experiences in predominately white societies.
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Cave Rock
Climbers, Courts, and a Washoe Indian Sacred PlaceMatthew S. Makley
University of Nevada Press, 2010
On August 27, 2007, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an earlier district court ruling that sport climbing on a Washoe Indian sacred site in western Nevada must cease. Cave Rock, a towering monolith jutting over the shore of Lake Tahoe, has been sacred to the Washoe people for over five thousand years. Long abused by road builders and vandals, it earned new fame in the late twentieth century as a world-class sport rock-climbing site. Over twenty years of bitter disputes and confrontation between the Washoe and the climbers ensued. The Washoe are a small community of fewer than 2,000 members; the climbers were backed by a national advocacy and lobbying group and over a hundred powerful corporations. Cave Rock follows the history of the fight between these two groups and examines the legal challenges and administrative actions that ultimately resulted in a climbing ban. After over two centuries of judicial decisions allowing federal control, economic development, or public interests to outweigh Indian claims to their sacred places, the Court’s ruling was both unprecedented and highly significant. As the authors conclude, the long-term implications of the ruling for the protection of Native rights are of equal consequence.
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Fire Management in the American West
Forest Politics and the Rise of MegafiresMark Hudson
University Press of Colorado, 2011
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.
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Origins of the National Forests
Harold K. Steen, ed.
Duke University Press, 1992
The national forests lay across America's diverse ecological and political geography, their 191 million acres ocuppying about 10 percent of the nation's land base. On the occasion of the centennial of the National Forest System, Origins of the National Forests examines the issues that have confronted the development, management, and use of the national forests since their inception in 1891.
The national forests are a major source of wood, water, minerals, forage, animal life and habitat, and wilderness. Yet questions of who controls and who benefits from the resources have posed problems and conflicts from the origins of the Forest Service to the present. Based on a 1991 Forest History Society conference, the essays collected here discuss a range of important topics surrounding our national forests, including the relationship between the federal and state systems that regulate the forests; the privately owned lands within the forests that are governed by federal statutes, state laws, and county ordinances; the ill-defined rights of those who lived on the land long before it was a national forest and were forced off the land; and the effect of early policymaking decisions made within the framework of the emerging Conservation Movement.
The national forests are a major source of wood, water, minerals, forage, animal life and habitat, and wilderness. Yet questions of who controls and who benefits from the resources have posed problems and conflicts from the origins of the Forest Service to the present. Based on a 1991 Forest History Society conference, the essays collected here discuss a range of important topics surrounding our national forests, including the relationship between the federal and state systems that regulate the forests; the privately owned lands within the forests that are governed by federal statutes, state laws, and county ordinances; the ill-defined rights of those who lived on the land long before it was a national forest and were forced off the land; and the effect of early policymaking decisions made within the framework of the emerging Conservation Movement.
Contributors. Ron Arnold, Pamela A. Conners, Mary S. Culpin, Stanley Dempsey, Peter Gillis, Donn E. Headley, Robert L. Hendricks, Stephen Larrabee, Patricia Nelson Limerick, Dennis L. Lynch, Michael McCarthy, Char Miller, Joseph A. Miller, James Muhn, Kevin Palmer, Donald Pisani, John F. Reiger, William Rowley, Michael Ryan, William E. Shands, Harold K. Steen, Richard White, Gerald W. Williams
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Public Lands, Public Debates
A Century of ControversyChar Miller, editor
Oregon State University Press, 2012
The subject of historic struggle and contemporary dispute, public lands in the United States are treasured spaces. In Public Lands, Public Debates, environmental historian Char Miller explores the history of conservation thinking and the development of a government agency with stewardship at its mission.
Owned in common, our national forests, monuments, parks, and preserves are funded through federal tax receipts, making these public lands national in scope and significance. Their controversial histories demonstrate their vulnerability to shifting tides of public opinion, alterations in fiscal support, and overlapping authorities for their management—including federal, state, and local mandates, as well as critical tribal prerogatives and military claims.
Miller takes the Forest Service as a gauge of the broader debates in which Americans have engaged since the late nineteenth century. In nineteen essays,he examines critical moments of public and private negotiation to help explain the particular, and occasionally peculiar, tensions that have shaped the administration of public lands in the United States.
“Watching democracy at work can be bewildering, even frustrating, but the only way individuals and organizations can sift through the often messy business of public deliberation is to deliberate...”
—Char Miller, from the introduction
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Shadows on the Klamath
A Woman in the WoodsLouise Wagenknecht
Oregon State University Press, 2021
In 1973, Louise Wagenknecht was just another college graduate, but unlike many, she wanted to go home, back to the Klamath Mountains where she was raised. When a job offer from the Klamath National Forest gave her that chance, she jumped at it. She landed in the logging town of Happy Camp, where she’d spent part of her childhood, as chronicled in her previous memoirs, White Poplar, Black Locust and Light on the Devils.
With Shadows on the Klamath, Louise Wagenknecht completes her trilogy about life in remote northwestern California. In this new work, she recounts her years in the Forest Service, starting as a clerical worker on the Klamath National Forest before moving to a field position where she did everything from planting trees to fighting fires.
Her story is about a Forest Service in transition, as forest management practices began to shift. Not least among these changes was the presence of women in the ranks—a change that many in the Forest Service resisted. Wagenknecht blends the personal and professional to describe land management in the West and the people who do it—their friendships, rivalries, and rural communities.
Anyone with an interest in the Klamath-Siskiyou region, or the history of women in natural resource agencies, or the many issues associated with industrial forestry, should read this book for its valuable firsthand perspective. General readers interested in the rural West and personal memoir will also be richly rewarded.
With Shadows on the Klamath, Louise Wagenknecht completes her trilogy about life in remote northwestern California. In this new work, she recounts her years in the Forest Service, starting as a clerical worker on the Klamath National Forest before moving to a field position where she did everything from planting trees to fighting fires.
Her story is about a Forest Service in transition, as forest management practices began to shift. Not least among these changes was the presence of women in the ranks—a change that many in the Forest Service resisted. Wagenknecht blends the personal and professional to describe land management in the West and the people who do it—their friendships, rivalries, and rural communities.
Anyone with an interest in the Klamath-Siskiyou region, or the history of women in natural resource agencies, or the many issues associated with industrial forestry, should read this book for its valuable firsthand perspective. General readers interested in the rural West and personal memoir will also be richly rewarded.
[more]
Toward a Natural Forest
The Forest Service in Transition (A Memoir)Jim Furnish
Oregon State University Press, 2015
Jim Furnish joined the U.S. Forest Service in 1965, enthusiastic and naive, proud to be part of such a storied and accomplished agency. Nothing could have prepared him for the crisis that would soon rock the agency to its foundation, as a burgeoning environmental movement challenged the Forest Service’s legacy and legitimacy.
The Forest Service stumbled in responding to a wave of lawsuits from environmental groups in the late 20th Century—a phenomenon best symbolized by the spotted owl controversy that shut down logging on public forests in the Pacific Northwest in the 1990s. The agency was brought to its knees, pitted between a powerful timber industry that had been having its way with the national forests for decades, and organized environmentalists who believed public lands had been abused and deserved better stewardship.
Toward a Natural Forest offers an insider’s view of this tumultuous time in the history of the Forest Service, presenting twin tales of transformation, both within the agency and within the author’s evolving environmental consciousness. While stewarding our national forests with the best of intentions, had the Forest Service diminished their natural essence and ecological values? How could one man confront the crisis while remaining loyal to his employer?
In this revealing memoir, Furnish addresses the fundamental human drive to gain sustenance from and protect the Earth, believing that we need not destroy it in the process. Drawing on the author’s personal experience and his broad professional knowledge, Toward a Natural Forest illuminates the potential of the Forest Service to provide strong leadership in global conservation efforts. Those interested in our public lands—environmentalists, natural resource professionals, academics, and historians—will find Jim Furnish’s story deeply informed, thought-provoking, and ultimately inspiring.
The Forest Service stumbled in responding to a wave of lawsuits from environmental groups in the late 20th Century—a phenomenon best symbolized by the spotted owl controversy that shut down logging on public forests in the Pacific Northwest in the 1990s. The agency was brought to its knees, pitted between a powerful timber industry that had been having its way with the national forests for decades, and organized environmentalists who believed public lands had been abused and deserved better stewardship.
Toward a Natural Forest offers an insider’s view of this tumultuous time in the history of the Forest Service, presenting twin tales of transformation, both within the agency and within the author’s evolving environmental consciousness. While stewarding our national forests with the best of intentions, had the Forest Service diminished their natural essence and ecological values? How could one man confront the crisis while remaining loyal to his employer?
In this revealing memoir, Furnish addresses the fundamental human drive to gain sustenance from and protect the Earth, believing that we need not destroy it in the process. Drawing on the author’s personal experience and his broad professional knowledge, Toward a Natural Forest illuminates the potential of the Forest Service to provide strong leadership in global conservation efforts. Those interested in our public lands—environmentalists, natural resource professionals, academics, and historians—will find Jim Furnish’s story deeply informed, thought-provoking, and ultimately inspiring.
[more]
Wild Forest Home
Stories of Conservation in the Pacific NorthwestBetsy L. Howell
University of Utah Press, 2024
Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, Betsy L. Howell spent her childhood exploring and thriving in old-growth coniferous forests. In the summer of 1986, she volunteered in Mt. Hood National Forest, surveying northern spotted owls. That summer position turned into three decades as a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Forest Service during a time of tremendous change within the agency.
The twenty-five essays in Wild Forest Home chronicle Howell’s career and personal experiences studying the wildlife of the Pacific Northwest during the litigious listing of the northern spotted owl and marbled murrelet under the Endangered Species Act and the Clinton administration’s adoption of the seminal 1994 Northwest Forest Plan. Meanwhile, Howell toiled on fire crews, searched for rare species, helped to monitor fishers reintroduced to the Olympic Peninsula, tested amphibians for deadly diseases, became a writer, and mourned the deaths of her parents. This captivating memoir seamlessly blends story and science to reveal a unique portrait of the struggles and joys of one wildlife biologist.
The twenty-five essays in Wild Forest Home chronicle Howell’s career and personal experiences studying the wildlife of the Pacific Northwest during the litigious listing of the northern spotted owl and marbled murrelet under the Endangered Species Act and the Clinton administration’s adoption of the seminal 1994 Northwest Forest Plan. Meanwhile, Howell toiled on fire crews, searched for rare species, helped to monitor fishers reintroduced to the Olympic Peninsula, tested amphibians for deadly diseases, became a writer, and mourned the deaths of her parents. This captivating memoir seamlessly blends story and science to reveal a unique portrait of the struggles and joys of one wildlife biologist.
[more]
Young Men and Fire
Norman Maclean
University of Chicago Press, 1992
On August 5, 1949, a crew of fifteen of the United States Forest Service's elite airborne firefighters, the Smokejumpers, stepped into the sky above a remote forest fire in the Montana wilderness. Two hours after their jump, all but three of these men were dead or mortally burned. Haunted by these deaths for forty years, Norman Maclean puts back together the scattered pieces of the Mann Gulch tragedy.
Young Men and Fire won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1992.
"A magnificent drama of writing, a tragedy that pays tribute to the dead and offers rescue to the living.... Maclean's search for the truth, which becomes an exploration of his own mortality, is more compelling even than his journey into the heart of the fire. His description of the conflagration terrifies, but it is his battle with words, his effort to turn the story of the 13 men into tragedy that makes this book a classic."—from New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice, Best Books of 1992
"A treasure: part detective story, part western, part tragedy, part elegy and wholly eloquent ghost story in which the dead and the living join ranks cheerfully, if sometimes eerily, in a search for truth and the rest it brings."—Joseph Coates, Chicago Tribune
"An astonishing book. In compelling language, both homely and elegant, Young Men and Fire miraculously combines a fascinating primer on fires and firefighting, a powerful, breathtakingly real reconstruction of a tragedy, and a meditation on writing, grief and human character.... Maclean's last book will stir your heart and haunt your memory."—Timothy Foote, USA Today
"Beautiful.... A dark American idyll of which the language can be proud."—Robert M. Adams, The New York Review of Books
"Young Men and Fire is redolent of Melville. Just as the reader of Moby Dick comes to comprehend the monstrous entirety of the great white whale, so the reader of Young Men and Fire goes into the heart of the great red fire and comes out thoroughly informed. Don't hesitate to take the plunge."—Dennis Drabelle, Washington Post Book World
"Young Men and Fire is a somber and poetic retelling of a tragic event. It is the pinnacle of smokejumping literature and a classic work of 20th-century nonfiction."—John Holkeboer, The Wall Street Journal
"Maclean is always with the brave young dead. . . . They could not have found a storyteller with a better claim to represent their honor. . . . A great book."—James R. Kincaid, New York Times Book Review
Young Men and Fire won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1992.
"A magnificent drama of writing, a tragedy that pays tribute to the dead and offers rescue to the living.... Maclean's search for the truth, which becomes an exploration of his own mortality, is more compelling even than his journey into the heart of the fire. His description of the conflagration terrifies, but it is his battle with words, his effort to turn the story of the 13 men into tragedy that makes this book a classic."—from New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice, Best Books of 1992
"A treasure: part detective story, part western, part tragedy, part elegy and wholly eloquent ghost story in which the dead and the living join ranks cheerfully, if sometimes eerily, in a search for truth and the rest it brings."—Joseph Coates, Chicago Tribune
"An astonishing book. In compelling language, both homely and elegant, Young Men and Fire miraculously combines a fascinating primer on fires and firefighting, a powerful, breathtakingly real reconstruction of a tragedy, and a meditation on writing, grief and human character.... Maclean's last book will stir your heart and haunt your memory."—Timothy Foote, USA Today
"Beautiful.... A dark American idyll of which the language can be proud."—Robert M. Adams, The New York Review of Books
"Young Men and Fire is redolent of Melville. Just as the reader of Moby Dick comes to comprehend the monstrous entirety of the great white whale, so the reader of Young Men and Fire goes into the heart of the great red fire and comes out thoroughly informed. Don't hesitate to take the plunge."—Dennis Drabelle, Washington Post Book World
"Young Men and Fire is a somber and poetic retelling of a tragic event. It is the pinnacle of smokejumping literature and a classic work of 20th-century nonfiction."—John Holkeboer, The Wall Street Journal
"Maclean is always with the brave young dead. . . . They could not have found a storyteller with a better claim to represent their honor. . . . A great book."—James R. Kincaid, New York Times Book Review
[more]
Young Men and Fire
Twenty-fifth Anniversary EditionNorman Maclean
University of Chicago Press, 2017
A devastating and lyrical work of nonfiction, Young Men and Fire describes the events of August 5, 1949, when a crew of fifteen of the US Forest Service’s elite airborne firefighters, the Smokejumpers, stepped into the sky above a remote forest fire in the Montana wilderness. Two hours after their jump, all but three of the men were dead or mortally burned. Haunted by these deaths for forty years, Norman Maclean puts together the scattered pieces of the Mann Gulch tragedy in Young Men and Fire, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Alongside Maclean’s now-canonical A River Runs through It and Other Stories, Young Men and Fire is recognized today as a classic of the American West. This twenty-fifth anniversary edition of Maclean’s later triumph—the last book he would write—includes a powerful new foreword by Timothy Egan, author of The Big Burn and The Worst Hard Time. As moving and profound as when it was first published, Young Men and Fire honors the literary legacy of a man who gave voice to an essential corner of the American soul.
Alongside Maclean’s now-canonical A River Runs through It and Other Stories, Young Men and Fire is recognized today as a classic of the American West. This twenty-fifth anniversary edition of Maclean’s later triumph—the last book he would write—includes a powerful new foreword by Timothy Egan, author of The Big Burn and The Worst Hard Time. As moving and profound as when it was first published, Young Men and Fire honors the literary legacy of a man who gave voice to an essential corner of the American soul.
[more]