A Conspiracy of Optimism

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A Conspiracy of Optimism

Management of the National Forests since World War Two

Paul W. Hirt

Our Sustainable Future Series

420 pages
Illus., maps

Paperback

October 1996

978-0-8032-7288-0

$25.00 Add to Cart

About the Book

A Conspiracy of Optimism explains the controversy now raging over the U.S. Forest Service’s management of America’s national forests. Confronted with the dual mandate of production and preservation, the U.S. Forest Service decided it could achieve both goals through more intensive management. For a few decades after World War Two, this “conspiracy of optimism” masked the fact that high levels of resource extraction were destroying forest ecosystems.

The effects of intensive management—massive clear-cuts, polluted streams, declining wildlife populations, and marred scenery—initiated several decades of environmental conflict that continues to the present. Hirt documents the roots of this conflict and illuminates recent changes in administration and policy that suggest a hopeful future for federal lands.

Author Bio

Paul W. Hirt is an assistant professor of western history at Washington State University.

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