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Book Cover
E-book
Author Langston, Nancy, author.

Title Forest dreams, forest nightmares : the paradox of old growth in the Inland West / Nancy Langston
Published Seattle : University of Washington Press, 1995

Copies

Description 1 online resource (xii, 368 pages, 24 unnumbered pages of plates) : illustrations, maps
Series Weyerhaeuser environmental books
Weyerhaeuser environmental book.
Contents Foreword / William Cronon -- Place and Ecology -- Before the Forest Service -- The Feds in the Forests -- Making Sense of Strangeness: Silvics in the Blues -- Liquidating the Pines -- Animals: Domestic and Wild Nature -- Fire -- Restoring the Inland West -- Conclusion: Living with Complexity
Summary Across the inland West, forests that once seemed like paradise have turned into an ecological nightmare. Fires, insect epidemics, and disease now threaten millions of acres of once-bountiful forests. Yet no one can agree what went wrong. Was it too much management - or not enough - that forced the forests of the inland West to the verge of collapse? Is the solution more logging, or no logging at all? In this gripping work of scientific and historical detection, Nancy Langston unravels the disturbing history of what went wrong with the western forests, despite the best intentions of those involved. Focusing on the Blue Mountains of northeastern Oregon and southeastern Washington, she explores how the complex landscapes that so impressed settlers in the nineteenth century became an ecological disaster in the late twentieth. Federal foresters, intent on using their scientific training to stop exploitation and waste, suppressed light fires in the ponderosa pinelands. Hoping to save the forests, they could not foresee that their policies would instead destroy what they loved. When light fires were kept out, a series of ecological changes began. Firs grew thickly in forests once dominated by ponderosa pines, and when droughts hit, those firs succumbed to insects, diseases, and eventually catastrophic fires
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 339-357) and index
Notes Print version record
Subject United States. Forest Service -- History
SUBJECT United States. Forest Service fast
Subject Forest policy -- Blue Mountains (Or. and Wash.) -- History
Forest reserves -- Blue Mountains (Or. and Wash.) -- Management -- History
Forest ecology -- Blue Mountains (Or. and Wash.) -- History
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS -- Real Estate -- General.
HISTORY -- United States -- State & Local -- West (AK, CA, CO, HI, ID, MT, NV, UT, WY)
Forest ecology
Forest policy
Forest reserves -- Management
SUBJECT Blue Mountains (Or. and Wash.) http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85015080
Subject United States -- Blue Mountains
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780295981000
0295981008
9780295989686
0295989688