Forest of Time: A Century of Science at Wind River Experimental Forest by Margaret Herring, Sarah Greene

Abstract

over dams and fish runs, but the history is fairlythinand he glosses over the most difficult questions, such as the role of theEndangered Species Act requirements or near defiance of court rulings by successive federal adminis trations.Barenti findsmore information and insight inhis recorded discussions with people he encounters on his journey. In short,Barenti's journalistic approach ? he is a professional journalist ? provides most of the substance he includes on the salmon crisis in thePacific Northwest. He is unconvinced by anyone he meets, leaving readerswondering ifany posi tion on the salmon issue is salient. "A former girlfriendwho had spent her careerworking for various public advocacy groups," Barenti writes, "once called me a consensus seeker. Itwasn't a compliment_I lack the convic tions of a truebeliever. I am, instead skeptical about almost everything.Maybe working as a reporter has made me thisway; maybe my skepticismmade me a reporter" (p. 143).His skepticism may bewell placed, but itrendershis account fairlyshallow. For deeper treatmentof the issue by another journalist, readers should consult thedated, but still insightful, Common Fate: Endangered Salmon and thePeople of the Northwest (1995) by JosephCone. Barenti's book excels in adventure travel and environmental description, itsprimary contributions to literature on the Pacific Northwest. He beautifully delivers an intimate portrait, from the water's edge, of Idaho's wil derness, thedammed Lower Snake River, and theColumbia Rivermain stem that transports readers to realplaces and genuine engagement with the environment. He describes river conditions and the origins of changes that contribute to thedecline of anadromous fish, such as the South Fork of the Salmon River, where fishers regularly caught thousands of migrating Chinook until the 1960s,when "the forest service allowed timber cutting in the watershed [where] ... silt from the cleared mountainsides smothered clean gravelswhere salmon had spawned and filledpools where the young salmon lived before migrating to the ocean" (p. 67). On the lowerColumbia, where industrialism and urban growthmight seem to eliminate natural conditions, Barenti finds a riverscape that contradicts the image of an altered river."The riverbroke into amaze of channels braided throughwith islands big and small as itbroadened itselfinto an estuary.... theColumbia in its lastmiles looksmore like a patch of Pacific Ocean squeezed inland than a part of some great riversystemflowing down from high mountains in the continent's far interior" (p. 216). Mike Barenti takes themeasure of the Salmon, Snake, and Columbia riversby kayak and gives readers an up-close portraitof today's riverconditions.Mike Farmer carries us along his western road trip, providing snapshot images of today's changing American West. Both end abruptly,as domost travelnarratives, with clear affirmationsof the journeys'worth and benefits to the travelers.Like other travel ogues about the West, these two takeus to the territories, while theyalso offersmartportraits of a dynamically changing region. William L. Lang Portland State University FOREST OF TIME:A CENTURY OF SCIENCEAT WIND RIVER EXPERIMENTAL FOREST byMargaret Herring and Sarah Greene foreword by William G. Robbins Oregon State University Press, Corvallis, 2007. Photographs, maps, notes, index. 200 pages. $22.95 paper. Forests, perhaps more than any other type of ecosystem, invite long-term biological study. Because the ecosystems are dominated by spe cies thatare both long-lived and economically important, interest in better understanding both forestbiology and forestryprinciples is 486 OHQ vol. 109, no. 3 understandable. European and Asian forests have longbeen sitesof scientific investigation, and in recent centuries,American forestshave become so aswell. Situated along a tributary of theColumbia River in Skamania County, Washington, theWind River Experimental Forest has been a site for scientificactivity for a century.Research at the sitebegan very early in the twentieth century, with thefirst small scale foraysintounderstanding thephysiology and the ecology of theDouglas Fir forest.As Douglas Fir lumber increased in importance to the region's economy, so too increased the intensity of researchat the Wind River site.The United States Forest Service gradually formal ized the Wind River forest's role, eventually designating itan Experimental Forestwithin theboundaries of theGiffordPinchotNational Forest and putting itunder the control of the Portland-based Pacific Northwest Research Station. Forest of Time focuses on the scientific activitiesat the Wind River site, from itsearliest days up through itspresent-day role in federal forest research.Most of...