Tree Huggers: Victory, Defeat & Renewal in the Northwest Ancient Forest Campaign

The high-profile campaign to protect and preserve the Pacific Northwest's ancient forests has been a hot environmental issue for the past 25 years, and remains so today. Tree Huggers is an incisive and spirited account of this ongoing conflict and the people at the forefront of the battle. Focusing on Oregon, the state at the forefront of the forest debate since the early 1970s, this fast-paced account retells the early history of logging on public lands and the origins of the forest campaign in the wilderness wars of the 1970s and early 1980s. It explains the belated efforts by scientists to understand the ecology of old-growth forests and the stubborn refusal by the Forest Service to heed the early warnings from within its own ranks that the forests were being overcut. Covering a vast amount of information in concise chapters, the book introduces forest activists, the lands they love, and the politicians who tried to thwart their efforts at every turn.