Hello:
If you are interested in forests then this new book will be of interest.
David
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Forest Fire Ecology Book Published
_Wild Fire: A Century Of Failed Forest Policy_, edited by George
Wuerthner. Published by the Foundation for Deep Ecology by
arrangement with Island Press, 2006, 322 pages, paperback, ISBN: 1-59726-069-X.
This is a book note not a review as I have yet to read this book
which recently arrived in my mailbox as a complimentary copy from The
Foundation for Deep Ecology. I believe_Wildfire__ to be an important
(and stunningly beautiful) coffee-table size book on the ecological
role played by wild fires in forests and how industrial forestry and
its supporters have erroneously viewed such fires. Industrial forest
ideology, which essentially sees every tree in the forests as spoken
for, is a reflection of an overall societal growth ideology. It aims
for maximum wood production and anything which is seen as interfering
with this, like wild fires, insect blooms, or leave-alone wildlife
habitat, are viewed as aberrations. Those in combat against
industrial forestry, as well as those who just love forests in a deep
ecology sense, need the information inside this book, just as we
needed the information in the 1993 book _Clearcut: The Tragedy Of
Industrial Forestry_ also put out by the Foundation. As the editor
of _Wildfire_ George Wuerthner, well known to forest activists
through past writings in Wild Earth_ and _The Earth First Journal_, says:
"Our major goal in creating this book is to promote a greater
appreciation of the role of wildfire on the landscape, to challenge
commonly held assumptions about wildfire, and to encourage
development of an ecologically based wildfire policy for public lands."
(Other important books which have been published by the Foundation,
and which have greatly assisted deeper environmental and green
activists, have been _Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial
Agriculture_, _Welfare Ranching: The Subsidized Destruction of the
American West_, and most recently _The Selected Works of Arne Naess_.)
The focus of this book are the forests of the US, not Canadian
forests yet the analysis presented is of direct relevance to forest
activists in Canada. Fire is not portrayed as a negative force in
this book of essays. There are about 40 authors overall. Many are
academics who are unknown to me. But there are also some well-known
names in the forest activist community, writers like Alan Drengson,
Mollie Matheson, Gary Synder, George Wuerthner (several essays),
Chris Maser, and Randal O'Toole. There are two helpful glossaries in
the book, one concerned with "Euphemisms and Spin" used by "the
fire-industrial complex and the beneficiaries of that industry,
including developers, and the timber and livestock industries..." The
other is a useful glossary of "Wild Land Fire Terms."
If you care deeply about forests and value natural processes in their
own right, get your hands on a copy of this book.
David Orton, October 2006
Please feel free to further circulate this book note.
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