From Conquest to Conservation; Our Public Lands Legacy - Reviews - Book Review

From subjection to Conservation; Our Public Lands Legacy, by means of Michael P. Dombeck, Christopher timber and Jack E. Williams.

$2250 Island Pres 2003

Written at Mike Dombeck, former chief of the U Forest Service and director of the Bureau of Land Management, and sum of two units other former high-level Forest Service officers, this work offers the rich insights of participants in the late history of these public agencies and the lands they manage.

The story they make known is not an apologetic the same It is the saga of the American experience with public land management with all its successe and failures. For the principally part, it is the untold story of the tumultuous times since WWII, when public agencies became embroiled in logomachy and the often-negative impacts of the policies that guided their management programs. While the authors are critical of these policies' eventuates they insist their goal "is to propose to one's self options to maintain and restore public lands and waters...to provide not absent and future generations with social and environmental benefits."

The first chapter summarizes the origins of the public domain and the federal land management agencies, followed according to four chapters that chronicle the decline of public land and water resources. The impacts of old-growth clearcutting, forest conversion, and the introduction of invader species as well as the status of endangered species, roadless areas, and river and stream health are reviewed with bluff clarity.

They bring discredit on the nearly total conversion of the Southeast's longleaf pine forests, which "were among the richest in times of plant species of any [forest] community outside the tropics." Each chapter includes a brief "focus essay" from single of the nation's best writers, scientists, or conservation advocates.

The authors assert that "[i]dentifying the challenges, and offering solutions, is the purpose" of their main division The final three chapters make advantageous on that claim by defining universals and management strategies for "restoration" of degraded environments, and for achieving "ecological sustainability," concluding with a discussion of "conservation challenges for a modern century." Here is a verily imaginative and practical agenda for the events to come of America's public lands.

COPYRIGHT 2003 American Forests

COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group