Synopses & Reviews
It can be said that all of human history is environmental history, for all human action happens in an environment--in a place. This collection of essays explores the environmental history of the Pacific Northwest of North America, addressing questions of how humans have adapted to the northwestern landscape and modified it over time, and how the changing landscape in turn affected human society, economy, laws, and values.
Northwest Lands and Peoples includes essays by historians, anthropologists, ecologists, a botanist, geographers, biologists, law professors, and a journalist. It addresses a wide variety of topics indicative of current scholarship in the rapidly growing field of environmental history.
"A wide ranging and provocative collection of essays . . . . should work well in college courses of various disciplines. . . . valuable to land managers, agency scientists, urban planners, and others involved with environmental issues in the region."--Mark Harvey, author of A Symbol of Wilderness: Echo Park and the American Conservation Movement
"An ambitious and effective collection of important articles on various aspects of the environmental history of the Pacific Northwest. . . . The collection will supplement courses in Northwest history, geography, natural resource management, and environmental studies, as well as American studies, environmental sociology, environmental policy, and environmental law."--Stephen Haycox, University of Alaska Anchorage
Table of Contents
Setting the Pacific Northwest stage: the influence of the natural environment / Eric C. Ewert -- Place: an argument for bioregional history / Dan Flores -- A natural history of the Puget Sound basin / Arthur R. Kruckeberg -- From where we are standing: the sense of place and environmental history / William L. Lang -- Willamette Eden: the ambiguous legacy / William G. Robbins -- Footprints and pathways: the urban imprint on the Pacific Northwest / Carl Abbott -- Salmon, sedentism, and cultivation: toward an environmental prehistory of the Northwest Coast / Douglas Deur -- Mobility as a factor limiting resource use on the Columbia Plateau / Eugene S. Hunn -- Unusual gardens: the Nez Perce and wild horticulture on the Eastern Columbia plateau / Alan G. Marshall -- Megafauna of the Columbia Basin, 1800-1840: Lewis and Clark in a game sink / Paul S. Martin and Christine R. Szuter -- Land divided: Yakama tribal land use in the Federal Allotment era / Barbara Leibhardt Wester -- Salmon in the Columbia basin: from abundance to extinction / Dale D. Goble -- The Northwest's hydroelectric heritage / Michael C. Blumm -- Fish first!: the changing ethics of ecosystem management / Carolyn Merchant -- Ecological influences of the introduction of livestock on Pacific Northwest ecosystems / Kathleen A. Dwire, Bruce A. McIntosh, and J. Boone Kauffman -- Environmental change in the northern Rockies: settlement and livestock grazing in southwestern Montana, 1860-1995 / William Wyckoff and Katherine Hansen -- Creating a hybrid landscape: irrigated agriculture in Idaho / Mark Fiege -- Cultural perceptions of the irrigated landscape in the Pacific Northwest / Dorothy Zeisler-Vralsted -- Human and ecological change in the inland Northwest forests / Nancy Langston -- Getting out the cut: a history of National Forest management in the northern Rockies / Paul W. Hirt -- Changing forests, changing needs: using the Pacific Northwest's westside forests, past and present / Thomas R. Cox -- Mining, environment, and historical change in the inland Northwest / Katherine G. Morrissey -- Western smelters and the problem of smelter smoke / Katherine Aiken -- Epilogue: environmental history and human perception / William Dietrich