Wars in the Woods: The Rise of Ecological Forestry in America. By Samuel P. Hays. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007. xviii, 277 pp. Cloth, $60.00, ISBN 0-8229-4328-X. Paper, $27.95, ISBN 0-8229-5940-2.)

Abstract

The central argument of Wars in the Woods is that the last thirty years of forestry politics and policy in the United States have been defined by the rise of ecological forestry and the challenge it posed to commodity forestry. Samuel P. Hays argues that this confrontation is driven by competing understandings of the value of forests and that each side's entrenched, value-based positions are difficult to mediate with scientific evidence or through political negotiation. Background chapters outline ecological forestry as a distinctive approach to forest management, consider the profusion of local forest-oriented citizen interest groups in the 1980s and 1990s, and examine the resistance to ecological forestry among forest commodity interests and their allies. Hays then addresses many recent forestry debates using the categories of “ecological forestry” and “commodity forestry.” The breadth of Hays's analysis is most helpful. He considers high-profile forestry issues that grabbed national headlines, such as debates over the spotted owl, salvage logging, roadless areas, and healthy forests. He also considers many local, state, and lower-profile (though no less important) federal issues. For instance, he examines efforts to establish a certification procedure for sustainable forestry practices, the role of conservation easements in state forestry protection, the evolution of the U.S. Forest Service's planning processes under the National Forest Management Act of 1976, and forestry plans for several national forests in the 1980s and 1990s, such as the Sierra Nevada plan. The most detailed case studies consider the resistance to ecological forestry in the Pennsylvania government and in the efforts of the George W. Bush administration to dismantle the tentative commitments to ecological forestry made by the Bill Clinton administration. Hays highlights the consistency of the confrontation between ecological and commodity forestry across a broad range of issues and regulatory arenas.