$19.95
Paperback – May 15, 2009
by Jeff Forester (Author)
Author Jeff Forester describes how humans have occupied and managed the northern borderlands of Minnesota, from tribal burning to pioneer and industrial logging to evolving conceptions of wilderness and restoration forestry. On the surface a story of Minnesota’s borderlands, The Forest for the Trees more broadly explores the nation’s history of resource extraction and wilderness preservation, casting forward to consider what today’s actions may mean for the future of America’s forests.
From early settlers and industrialists seeking the pine forests’ wealth to modern visitors valuing the tranquility of protected wilderness, the region known today as the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness has offered assorted treasures to each generation. By focusing on the ecological history of the BWCAW’s Winton watershed, Forester shows how the global story of logging, forestry, conservation, and resource management unfolded in the northern woods of Minnesota. The result is a telling exploration of human attitudes toward wilderness: the grasp after a forest’s resources, the battles between logging and tourist interests, and decades of conservation efforts that have left northern Minnesota denuded of white pine and threatened with potentially devastating fire.
The result of a decade of research, The Forest for the Trees chronicles six phases of human interaction with the BWCAW: tribal, burning the land for cultivation; pioneering, harvesting lumber on a small scale; industrial, accelerating the cut and consequently increasing the fire danger; conservation, reacting to both widespread fires and unsustainable harvest levels; wilderness, recognizing important values in woodlands beyond timber; and finally restoration, using prescribed burns and other techniques to return the forest to its “natural” state. Whether promoted or excluded, one constant through these phases is fire. The Forest for the Trees explores how tribal people burned the land to encourage agriculture, how conservationists and others later fought fire in the woods by completely suppressing it, and finally how scientific understanding brought the debate full circle, as recent controlled burns in the BWCAW seek to lessen significant fuel loads that could produce fires of unprecedented magnitude.
Shipping rates are calculated based on local US cities; international rates may apply for other countries.
Hardcover – October 20, 2011
by Julie Courtwright (Author)
Prairie fires have always been a spectacular and dangerous part of the Great Plains. Nineteenth-century settlers sometimes lost their lives to uncontrolled blazes, and today ranchers such as those in the Flint Hills of Kansas manage the grasslands through controlled burning. Even small fires, overlooked by history, changed lives—destroyed someone's property, threatened someone's safety, or simply made someone's breath catch because of their astounding beauty. Julie Courtwright, who was born and raised in the tallgrass prairie of Butler County, Kansas, knows prairie fires well. In this first comprehensive environmental history of her subject, Courtwright vividly recounts how fire—setting it, fighting it, watching it, fearing it—has bound Plains people to each other and to the prairies themselves for centuries. She traces the history of both natural and intentional fires from Native American practices to the current use of controlled burns as an effective land management tool, along the way sharing the personal accounts of people whose lives have been touched by fire. The book ranges from Texas to the Dakotas and from the 1500s to modern times. It tells how Native Americans learned how to replicate the effects of natural lightning fires, thus maintaining the prairie ecosystem. Native peoples fired the prairie to aid in the hunt, and also as a weapon in war. White settlers learned from them that burns renewed the grasslands for grazing; but as more towns developed, settlers began to suppress fires-now viewed as a threat to their property and safety. Fire suppression had as dramatic an environmental impact as fire application. Suppression allowed the growth of water-wasting trees and caused a thick growth of old grass to build up over time, creating a dangerous environment for accidental fires. Courtwright calls on a wide range of sources: diary entries and oral histories from survivors, colorful newspaper accounts, military weather records, and artifacts of popular culture from Gene Autry stories to country song lyrics to Little House on the Prairie. Through this multiplicity of voices, she shows us how prairie fires have always been a significant part of the Great Plains experience-and how each fire that burned across the prairies over hundreds of years is part of someone's life story. By unfolding these personal narratives while looking at the bigger environmental picture, Courtwright blends poetic prose with careful scholarship to fashion a thoughtful paean to prairie fire. It will enlighten environmental and Western historians and renew a sense of wonder in the people of the Plains.
Paperback – May 21, 2012
by Robert W. Cermak (Author)
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 2005-06-30 Excerpt: ...that were constructed by the CCC in the mid-thirties. The master plan and fire replanning described a Region 5 fire control organization that consisted of lookouts, tank truck suppression crews, a few guards and fire prevention men. The tank truck crew became the backbone of a fire pre-suppression organization that remains essentially unchanged today. The improvements that have occurred since 1940 have largely been in quality of equipment, improved tactics and better communication. Telephone lines were the most important form of communications in the region through World War II, but radio communications made giant strides during the thirties. Radio had a checkered history in the Forest Service. Early experiments in the Apache National Forest (Region 3) in 1916 were followed by wireless transmissions during the Army air patrols of 1919-1921. Because tight budgets were the rule during the twenties, Roy Headley took a dim view of most efforts to improve radio communications. Throughout the early development of radio by the Forest Service, Headley had to be conscious of an agreement with American Telephone Telegraph Company, whereby the Forest Service received lowered telephone rates so long as it did not foster a communication system that competed with the telephone company.38 Headley's opposition changed to strong support after he and Chief Forester Greeley witnessed the demonstration in August 1927 of a crude little contraption built by Dwight L. Beatty of Region 1. Beatty had been a mule skinner, ranger and forest supervisor. While working in the Region 1 office, he educated himself in radio technology and built the contraption to prove that a portable radio could be built. After the demonstration, he was assigned the responsibility for radio developm...
Library Binding – January 1, 2005
by Jacqueline A Ball (Author)
With walls of fire scorching the landscape, wildfires are fearsome and unstoppable natural disasters. In Wildfire! The 1871 Peshtigo Firestorm, young readers will experience the most destructive wildfire in U.S. history through the compelling story of Mary and Samuel Drew, who survived the advancing firestorm as their friends and neighbors perished. Readers will discover the causes of wildfires, and learn advances in preventing and fighting wildfires since the firestorm of 1871. Gripping four-color photos, maps, and diagrams of wildfires will capture students' attention.
Paperback – January 1, 1994
by Rollo Arnold (Author)
1829-1922 Hardcover – January 1, 1928
by Christopher C. Andrews (Author)
Hardcover – January 1, 2009
There are no reviews yet.