Review 521: Forty Years a Forester

Forty Years a Forester by Elers Koch
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is an autobiographical account of Elers Koch who started working as a forester when the U.S. Forest Service begun near the beginning of the 20th century. Gifford Pinchot established the forest service, being the very first chief and perhaps the very first United States Forester. He hired the first group of young men, with Koch being among them, and the only one that grew up in the West.

While the book starts with his early days of growing up and college, there isn’t very much of his personal life, instead it is focused on being a forest ranger. The earliest days were taken up mostly as surveying the forests, drawing up maps then claiming them for protection. Then as inspector. The forest service also handled the logging, determining which trees should be cut and which should stay, so they were involved in managing the forest. And of course, there are forest fires. Several chapters discuss this and are among the most exciting passages of the book when escaping near death from the flames.

Koch occasionally compares how things were done in those early days to now, such as using airplanes and smoke jumpers helping out in fighting the forest fires. Of course his “today” is now many decades ago and things have changed even more. Koch advocated for sometimes not fighting a natural fire and letting it burn as the best way to manage the forest. That was not the policy at the time. Another thing Koch did not approve was in this all-out effort to save the forest from burning, roads were made and developed throughout the woodlands, thus ruining the pristine wide open lands and wilderness.

When the book was originally written in 1949 Koch could not find a publisher. He died before it was published, it took nearly 50 years before the book found a publisher. This is a very readable book and an fascinating account of what it was being a forester over a hundred years ago. Glad this book finally found a publisher.

I listened to the audiobook version but also had access to an eBook which I used to glance through and see the photographs and maps that were included. Those are always a nice addition to a non-fiction book, particularly an autobiography.