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Center for
Responsible Forestry
Educational Resources
Books, Documentaries, Podcast, Science Articles, Research & More!!
Books
Reading is Power!
Are you looking to start your journey learning about the importance of Older Forests? Then these books are a great place to start!
In Canopy of Titans, Paul Koberstein and Jessica Applegate examine the global importance of the Pacific Coastal Temperate Rainforest that stretches from Northern California to Alaska. Their urgent and authoritative account sets out the threats facing a vital environmental resource, and celebrates the beauty and complexity of one of the world’s great forests.
In Smokescreen, Scientist and activist Chad T. Hanson explains how natural alarm over wildfire has been marshaled to advance corporate and political agendas, notably those of the logging industry.
Forest fires, including the largest ones, can create extraordinarily important and rich wildlife habitats as long as they are not subjected to postfire logging.
Ancient Forests of the Pacific Northwest provides a global context for what is happening in the Pacific Northwest, analyzing the remaining ancient forest and the threats to it from atmospheric changes and logging. It shows how human tampering affects an ecosystem, and how the Pacific Northwest could become a model for sustainable forestry worldwide.
Logging in Forks has given way to tourism, but even with its new fame, Forks is still a home to loggers and others who make their living from the surrounding forests. The new edition of The Final Forest recounts how forest policy and practices have changed since the early 1990s and also tells us what has happened in Forks and where the actors who were so important to the timber wars are now.
In Finding the Mothertree, Simard brings us into her world, where trees are not simply the source of timber or pulp, but are a complicated, interdependent circle of life; that forests are social, cooperative creatures connected through underground networks by which trees communicate their vitality and vulnerabilities with communal lives not that different from our own.
Are trees social beings? In The Hidden Life of Trees forester and author Peter Wohlleben convincingly makes the case that, yes, the forest is a social network. He draws on groundbreaking scientific discoveries to describe how trees are like human families: supporting eachother as they grow, share nutrients with those who are sick or struggling, and even warn each other of impending dangers.
Are you looking for books on advocacy, adventure, or inspiring forest stories—including how to start your own? Then these books are for you!
Conservation Confidential recounts the wild path Mitch Friedman took from radical Earth First! activist engaging in controversial protests to the founder and longtime director of Conservation Northwest. The book documents challenges, success stories, and key lessons along the way to helping preserve Northwest ancient forests, peaceably recover wolves in the region, and much more.
The Decimation of the World's Largest Temperate Rainforest as told in The Taking of the Tongass - What would make a dedicated U.S. Forest Service employee "timber beast," become a whistleblower against the timber sale he personally created? Why would environmental groups seek to silence him? What went on in the dark, rainy isolation that is Southeast Alaska?
In Born of Fire and Rain, writer M. L. Herring takes readers into the Pacific temperate rainforest at the tumultuous edge of a shifting continent in a precarious moment of time. Readers peek behind the magnificent scenery into a forest of ancient trees, exploding mountains, disappearing owls, tsunamis, megafires, and ten million people to learn what it means to be a forest in a world of upheavals
The Wild Trees, by turns terrifying, moving, and fascinating, is an adventure story told in novelistic detail by a master of nonfiction narrative. The author shares his protagonists’ passion for tall trees, and he mastered the techniques of tall-tree climbing to tell the story in The Wild Trees—the story of the fate of the world’s most splendid forests and of the imperiled biosphere itself.
The Overstory, is an impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of—and paean to—the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers’s twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond.
A Forest of Your Own explore all aspects of forest management—everything from how to evaluate a piece of land before you buy it through implementing long-term plans that may include establishing new stands of trees, harvesting mushrooms as well as wood, and protecting your forests far into the future through wildfire reduction and climate change adaptation.
Documentaries
Learning is Power!
The Future of Forests with Dr. Jerry Franklin explains what ecological forestry is, and how it can help restore forests to be more resilient to climate change impacts. Forest is literally Dr. Franklin's middle name (yes, really).
UNDERSTORY - Three women set sail on a 350 mile expedition through Alaska’s massive Tongass National Forest, exploring how clearcut logging old growth forests affects wildlife, local communities, and our planet’s climate.
LIVING LEGACIES - When DNR's clearcut harvest plans catch the attention of local communities whose lives would be affected, a statewide movement is born to protect a special new classification of forests – Legacy Forests.
FREE TO GROW -Quietly dismissed by agency, silenced by industry, and threatened by fellow community, rural families in the Pacific Northwest have lived alongside industrial forestry herbicides for more than 80 years.
Podcasts
Listening is Power!
The Timber Wars - Thirty years ago, the Northwest was torn apart in a fight over trees, owls and the meaning of the natural world. “Timber Wars” looks at the history and consequences of this conflict.
Alie Ward - Xylology - we wrangled our favorite sawmill owner/operator of LA’s Angel City Lumber, Jeff Perry – who rescues downed street trees from the chipper and turns them into beautiful planks, boards, stumps and chonks.
Substacks & Storymaps
Synthesis is Power!
The Climate According to Life - Rob Lewis - In 1999, after realizing that despite years of climate activism, I had little understanding of how Earth’s climate worked as a whole, I began a study of the matter to find out, a journey which completely reoriented my thinking about Earth’s climate.
Forest for Communities - Community forests provide a combination of meaningful environmental, economic, and social benefits to local communities – benefits such as income, clean water, recreation, education, fire resilience, wildlife habitat, and strong partnerships.
Science & Research
Knowledge is Power!
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