In a Dark Wood
A Critical History of the Fight Over Forests
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- $77.99
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- $77.99
Publisher Description
In a Dark Wood presents a history of debates among ecologists over what constitutes good forestry, and a critique of the ecological reasoning behind contemporary strategies of preservation, including the Endangered Species Act. Chase argues that these strategies, in many instances adopted for political, rather than scientific reasons, fail to promote biological diversity and may actually harm more creatures than they help. At the same time, Chase offers examples of conservation strategies that work, but which are deemed politically incorrect and ignored.
In a Dark Wood provides the most thoughtful and complete account yet written of radical environmentalism. And it challenges the fundamental—but largely unexamined—assumptions of preservationism, such as those concerning whether there is a "balance of nature," whether all branches of ecology are really science, and whether ecosystems exist. In his new introduction, Chase evaluates the response to his book and reports on recent developments in environmental science, policy, and politics.
In a Dark Wood was judged by a recent national poll to be one of the one hundred best nonfiction books written in the English language during the twentieth century. A smashing good read, this book will be of interest to environmentalists, ecologists, philosophers, biologists, and bio-ethicists, and anyone concerned about ecological issues.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The fight to save old-growth forests and threatened species in the Pacific Northwest has been the biggest environmental conflict in U.S.history in terms of area size, economic cost and the number of human beings affected. Chase (Playing God in Yellowstone) has written a well-documented account of the conflict and a provocative, penetrating analysis of the environmental movement. In the last two decades, he argues, radical activists moved from fact to value judgments, from science to politics. In the Northwest, the locale of the struggle became the media; journalists saturated public consciousness with the message of biocentrism, a philosophy that stresses humans are no more important than any other creatures. Chase argues this is bad science. He states that biocentrists can't distinguish fact from value and that random disturbance, not permanence or order, governs nature. Chase points out that the Endangered Species Act did not reflect scientific opinion but a confluence of ancient religious and philosophical thought. He views the fight over old-growth forests and owls as a kind of class war, a conflict among competing regional, vocational, recreational, aesthetic and economic interests. At present, the Clinton administration has adopted biocentrism as the guiding philosophy of all federal land management. Environmentalism, cautions the author, has taken a wrong turn.
