Review 530: Defending Giants

Defending Giants: The Redwood Wars and the Transformation of American Environmental Politics by Darren Frederick Speece
My rating: 4.25 of 5 stars

This is an in-depth look at the fight to save old growth redwoods on the California northern coast that are now known as the Redwood Wars. The redwood tree is known by several names, scientifically as Sequoia sempervirens, colloquially as coastal redwoods, California redwoods, or just plain redwoods. Their preferred habitat today is along the coast of Northern California reaching into Oregon. The old-growth trees that were at the heart of the redwood wars are forests and these giant trees which can live for two-thousand years.

With the narrow range of where these trees can grow, which like coastal fog, the 1.3 million acres of area from pre-Columbus days are now down to just 5% of the land. And to save that five percent was a hard fought battle that this book describes.

The main company involved is Pacific Lumber. It was founded in 1863 and was a family company that grew to be one of the largest in the area. The company policy in cutting trees was in a fairly sustainable manner with looking towards long term and generally did not clear-cut groves of tree stands. They were more selective.

Unfortunately, it didn’t stay that way. In 1985 the company was taken over by Maxxam Corporation run by Charles Hurwitz, who was known as a corporate raider and used the Michael Milken junk bonds. (see savings and loan crisis of the 1980s.) This is when the old-growth redwoods became extremely endangered. The plan by Maxxam was to reduce the inventory, i.e. trees standing, in order to increase profits as quickly as possible and clear-cutting began.

In order to make this shorter, let’s just say that didn’t happen, not entirely anyway. The book is detailed in explaining all the various steps and stages that took place during these years. There were many, many lawsuits, activists protests and actions all to raise awareness and save the last standing redwoods from being cut down. Environmental groups, forest plans and government agencies, along with the main environmental leaders are heavily features in the book. Several women took major roles as leaders, which needs to be acknowledged since the corporations, forest service and government were all men.

There aren't any close biographies of people involved, only cursory. Although the car bombing in 1990 of two prominent activists, Judi Bari and Darryl Cherny, does come up several times. It was a major point in the Redwood Wars.

The book is somewhat academic. Darren Speece wrote his PhD thesis on this topic being nearly the same length of this book. Certainly that was transformed into this book. The book comes with extensive section of notes (46 pages), Selected Bibliography (8 pages) and a very long index that is 31 pages.