Forest Primeval.

Forest Primeval

Most of this book is a well-informed and imaginative appeal for respect of the last old-growth forests of the Northwest. It begins with a lightning fire in the year 987 and ends 1,001 years later as Americans debate the wisdom of cutting the seedlings that took root in the burned land.

Maser, a forest zoologist, tells a story rich in the small details of animal and plant life that makes biology easy to learn. Throughout the story, people come and go and history takes its toll on them and on the nearby forests. Maser's own career is woven into the last 50 years of the story.

The science is well told. The history is often delivered with a moral attached. All the Native Americans were as good and wholesome as Straight Arrow. (This book, like so many others recently, suffers from the notion that Native Americans were intuitive ecologists who never coveted their neighbor's territory or filled a French canoe with skins.)

The romanticism and occasional preaching aside, when it comes to wildlife and trees, this is a very readable introduction to the old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest. It's also a book that is sure to generate more resistance to the cutting of old-growth.