Tongass: Pulp Politics and the Fight for the Alaska Rain Forest
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*Second Edition*
Kathie Durbin
2005. 352 pages. Illustrations. Bibliography. Index.
ISBN 0-87071-056-7. Paperback, $19.95
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The fate of the Tongass National Forest is one of today's most closely watched environmental issues.
Praised by
Publishers Weekly as a "blow-by-blow account of a messy controversy and an impressive
example of thorough journalism," Kathie Durbin's acclaimed volume is now available in an expanded
edition that updates the story of this remote, wild, beautiful land.
After World War II, the U.S. government lured two pulp companies to Southeast Alaska by promising them
low-cost timber from the Tongass National Forest, the planet's largest coastal temperate rain forest.
The mills brought jobs and growth to a sparsely settled region. They also wreaked ecological havoc and
created a timber industry that broke labor unions, drove competitors out of business, and controlled
politicians and the U.S. Forest Service. It took a national campaign, led by grassroots environmentalists,
to bring sanity and sustainability to management of the Tongass.
In her insightful account of Alaska's era of pulp, Durbin draws on the voices of the people most affected:
independent loggers who fought back when the pulp companies conspired to drive them out of business;
courageous biologists who warned that logging was destroying critical fish and wildlife habitat; Tlingit
Indians who saw their traditional hunting grounds vanish; young activists and lawyers who found their lives
transformed by the battle for the Alaska rain forest.
In this new edition, Durbin updates the story of the Tongass with a new chapter describing political and
economic developments since 1999. Among the changes: a dramatic growth in cruise ship tourism, a new
governor's plan for a system of roads and bridges to link remote Southeast Alaska communities, and a renewed
push by the Forest Service under a timber-friendly administration in Washington, D.C., to open vast roadless
areas to logging. Yet the fight for the Alaska rain forest is becoming a broader movement as appreciation for
the true value of the region's wilderness grows.
"Tongass is an important, revealing history of corporate harvesting of America's largest, and last,
great rain forest. . . . This is advocacy at its best, based on the evidence, tough and honest, and marvelously
written.
--Stephen Haycox, author of Frigid Embrace: Politics, Economics, and Environment in Alaska
About the Author
Kathie Durbin is the author of
Tree Huggers: Victory, Defeat and Renewal in the Northwest Ancient Forest Campaign.
She has written about forest ecology and forest politics since 1989, as a staff reporter for
The Oregonian and
for numerous other publications.
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