Wild Logging; A Guide to Environmentally and Economically Sustainable Forestry by Bryan Foster.

$16. Mountain Press Publishing Co., 2003

With the instincts of a seasoned storyteller, Bryan Foster lets the people he visits with teach readers about being woodland owners. His book blends the personal stories of several landowners and a logger-forester in Oregon and Montana, and the practical advice gleaned from their decades of experience.

While Wild Logging focuses on the Intermountain West, forest owners everywhere will find the book holds new insights into the deeper meanings of stewardship and its hands-on application to their own forests. Although a sort of basic primer for non-industrial private forest owners, it has received endorsements from two former chiefs of the U.S. Forest Service.

Based on his visits with 35 landowners over several months, Foster has assembled a user-friendly set of "Technical Notes" to complement the personal stories of the featured landowners. These include basic silviculture and forest protection, sample management plans and logging contracts, the selection of consulting foresters and loggers, notes on the economics and legal aspects of land management, a directory of public and private organizations providing assistance for landowners, and a brief bibliography.

The message of Foster's book is expressed succinctly by Bob Love, a forester-logger whom he visits: "It's not what you take from the forest, but what you leave that's important."