Books

Temperate Forest Foundation offers four books. Click a book cover to order or for more information.

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American Forests,
A History of Resiliency and Recovery

by Douglas MacCleery

[2066-040] Book: American Forests, A History of Resiliency and Recovery ($8 ea.)

Paperback, Third Printing 1994, by the Forest History Society
ISBN: 0890300488 - Dimensions (in inches): 0.25 x 9.00 x 5.89

There is also the excellent video, "America's Forest" a documentary produced by the USDA Office of Public Affairs & the Forest History Society, and distributed by the Temperate Forest Foundation.

The publisher, Dr. Steven Anderson, Forest History Society calls it "An unbiased history on issues about American Forests."

Many of today's forestry debates hinge on "how much there is" and "how much there was." American Forests documents the changes our nation's forests have experienced from colonial times to the present. It presents a baseline for discussion. Included are data about the extent of U.S. forests prior to European settlement; native American peoples' effects on the forest; population and agricultural expansion; uses of the forests for fuel, iron-making, transportation, and expanded lumber production; early conservation efforts in forestry and wildlife; and fire protection. It concludes with lessons from the past and challenges for the future. It contains 13 photographs and 18 figures and graphs. Four-color cover.

From the book's synopsis:

For more than a century, Americans have carried on a debate about their forests, and the sometimes-heated discussions continue today. In American Forests: A History of Resiliency and Recovery, Douglas W. MacCleery traces this debate from the time that forest management first came to the United States and became the center of the Conservation Movement.

MacCleery's history of recovery establishes that the "timber famine" that Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot so stridently forecast in the early-twentieth century never occurred. He shows that logged lands have come back, either through natural processes or human effort, unless converted to agricultural or urban use. Also, many species of wildlife - once dwindled - are again abundant, forested watersheds are better protected, and the number of forest acres that burn each year has been dramatically reduced.

Nonetheless, as MacCleery points out, the new forests are different from the original forests, which had evolved according to nature's rhythms and in response to native people's significant manipulation. And while some wildlife species thrive under the new conditions, others do not. Appreciation of the forest as an ecosystem increases, but the debate is not over.

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America's Fires
Management on Wildlands and Forests,

by Stephen J. Pyne

[2066-041] Book: America's Fires: Management on Wildlands and Forests ($8 ea.)
Paperback, June 1997, by the Forest History Society
ISBN: 0890300534 - Dimensions (in inches): 0.25 x 9.00 x 5.89

There is also the excellent video, "Two Sides of Fire" produced by the Temperate Forest Foundation.

The publisher, Dr. Steven Anderson, Forest History Society says that it, "Provides a historical background on fire and forest health."

Fire is at the heart of many forest health and sustainability issues being discussed today. Written by the authoritative expert on the subject, this booklet documents the extraordinarily successful twentieth century campaign to prevent and suppress wildland and forest fires. Ironically, this fire exclusion has altered ecosystems in ways that increase forest susceptibility to fires and also to insect attacks. Healthy forests in America require fire. At the same time urban expansion into wildland areas has caused logistical nightmares in fighting wild fires. The result, in some cases, has been saving individual homes while fires rage on to destroy valuable timber and recreational resources.

Contains 18 photographs and 21 maps and figures. Four-color cover.

From the book's synopsis:

America has had wildland fire as long as it has had wildlands. Until wholesale industrialization, Americans managed fire by changing its form, mostly by substituting controlled for wildfire. Industrial technologies, however, substituted for open burning, and especially on public lands, the absence of fire has become itself a problem.

Fires have been as much a part of American wildlands as soils and sunlight. But an industrial society has sought to diminish, even abolish, open burning, and has succeeded in domestic and, increasingly, in agricultural settings. In wildlands, however, fire abolition has become untenable, and wildland managers have sought fire's restoration.

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A Forest Journey,
The Role of Wood in the Development of Civilization

by John Perlin

[2066-043] Book: A Forest Journey - The Role Wood in the Development of Civilization ($22 ea.)

Softcover, 1989 by Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0-674-30892-1 Dimensions (in inches): 1.10 x 9.10 x 6.10

From the book's synopsis:

Throughout the ages trees have provided the material to make fire, the heat of which has allowed our species to reshape the earth for its use. With heat from wood fires, relatively cold climates became habitable; inedible grains were changed into a major source of food; clay could be converted into pottery, serving as useful container to store food; people could extract metal from stone, revolutionizing the implements used in agriculture, crafts, and warfare; and builders could make durable construction materials such as brick, cement, lime, plaster, and tile for housing and storage facilities.

Contents

• Author's Note
• Credits
• Forward by Lester R. Brown
• Introduction
• The Old World
  • Mesopotamia
  • Bronze Age Crete and Knossos
  • Mycenaean Greece
  • Cyprus
  • Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic Greece
  • Rome
  • The Muslim Mediterranean
  • The Venetian Republic
  • England
  • Early Tudor
  • Elizabeth I
  • The Early Stuarts
  • Civil War to Late Stuarts
  • England Leaves the Wood Age
• The New World
  • Madeira, The West Indies, and Brazil
  • America
• Notes and Comments
• Index

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Forest Sustainability: The History, the Challenge, the Promise

by Donald W. Floyd

[2066-044] Book: Forest Sustainability: The History, the Challenge, the Promise ($8 ea.)

Softcover, 2002 by The Forest History Society
ISBN: 0-89030-061-5

From the book's back cover:

Sustainability is at the forefront of resource discussions today. Varying definitions, lack of comparable inventories, and different value systems all challenge sustainability's use as a management concept. During the last century conservation has evolved. The pathway from "conservation lumbering," "sustained yield," "multiple use," "ecosystem management," and now "sustainable forestry" raises the question...What will be the next management umbrella?

In Forest Sustainability: The History, the Challenge, the Promise, Donald W. Floyd suggests that forest sustainability on a global basis is a distant, worty, and perhaps unobtainable goal without significant changes in technology, population control, and human behavior. Nevertheless, it remains a goal that we must seek, just as we strive for "perfect justice," "absolute truth," or "democracy." This booklet provides a historical context to sustainable forestry internationally with a focus on North America.

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Canada's Forests: A History

by Ken Drushka

[2066-045] Book: Canada's Forests: A History ($8 ea.)

Softcover, 2003 by McGill-Queen's University Press
ISBN: 0-7735-2660-9 

From the back cover:

Looking back over 10,000 years, from the end of the last glacial period to the beginning of the twenty-first century, Ken Drushka explores how the human use of our forests has changed and combines, for the first time, an overall description of the ten forest regions of Canada with an overview of their historical uses and their current condition.

Canada's Forests analyses the changes in human attitudes towards the forests, detailing the rise of the late nineteenth-century conservation movement and its subsequent decline after World War I, the interplay between industry and government in the development of policy, the adoption of sustained yield policies after World War II, and the recent embracing of concepts of sustainable forest management in response to environmental concerns. Drushka argues that, despite centuries of use, Canadian forests retain their vitality and integrity.

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