A Different Nature: The Paradoxical World of Zoos and Their Uncertain Future. By David Hancocks. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. xxii + 280 pp. Illustrations, bibliography, index. $35.00

Abstract

Federal land management agencies in the United States, particularly those responsible for overseeing public forestlands, are under constant vigil by those demanding environmentally responsible land use. Since the early 199os, many agencies have responded to these political demands by brandishing Ecosystem Management -a framework for environmentally friendly forestry. In 1993, for instance, the United States Forest Service, the National Park Service (NPS), and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), pledged to work with each other to protect and restore biological diversity and preserve wildlife species in the Pacific Northwest. These agencies collaborated on land management plans that would cover over 2omillion acres of federally administered forests from Northern California, Oregon, and Washington to Idaho and western Montana.! These federal agencies embraced Ecosystem Management to varying degrees The NPS, which encountered little criticism, has been content to cooperate with the other two agencies in managing endangered and threatened wildlife species, particularly in the western states. The BLM and the Forest Service, on the other hand, faced both public outrage for their logging policies and court rulings that halted timber operations across the Pacific Northwest-their most profitable forests - and they went further in their engagement with Ecosystem Management. Of these two agencies, the Forest Service's Ecosystem Management has been more involved and has drawn far more media attention, though BLM Director Jim Baca pledged to work "diligently to develop an approach to Ecosystem Management on the 270 million acres of public lands ... for which it has stewardship responsibilities."3 The BLM is and has been significantly smaller agency (in terms of budget and workforce), and it has been significantly less influential in national politics than the Forest Service. Its efforts toward Ecosystem Management have involved playing a junior partner to the larger agency in efforts to meet federal law.4 The Forest Service made Ecosystem Management its policy mantel piece, following a decade of severe internal and external conflict that culminated in a political