Based on newly available archival sources and interviews with many of the participants, this groundbreaking study explores for the first time the grassroots campaigns that yielded some of the largest designated wilderness areas in America.
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Based on newly available archival sources and interviews with many of the participants, this groundbreaking study explores for the first time the grassroots campaigns that yielded some of the largest designated wilderness areas in America.
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PLEASE NOTE, WE DO NOT SHIP TO DENMARK. New Book. Shipped from UK in 4 to 14 days. Established seller since 2000. Please note we cannot offer an expedited shipping service from the UK.
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New. The Rocky Mountains of Idaho and Montana are home to some of the most important remaining American wilderness areas. Where Roads Will Never Reach tells the stories of hunters, anglers, outfitters, scientists, and other concerned citizens who devoted themselves to protecting remnant wild lands and ecosystems in the Northern Rockies. Num Pages: 376 pages, illustrations. BIC Classification: RNK. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 229 x 152 x 28. Weight in Grams: 567. 2015. Paperback.....We ship daily from our Bookshop.
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Seller's Description:
PLEASE NOTE, WE DO NOT SHIP TO DENMARK. New Book. Shipped from UK in 4 to 14 days. Established seller since 2000. Please note we cannot offer an expedited shipping service from the UK.
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Very Good. A copy that has been read, but remains in excellent condition. Pages are intact and are not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged. There are no stickers on book or rips in dust cover.
"Where Roads Will Never Reach" by Frederick Swanson is a weighty and thoroughly compelling story about courage. Idealists, visionaries, activists - call them what you will - have taken on unequal and usually unpopular fights over decades to save wild places in the Northern Rockies of the United States. Their call? Leave the wilderness alone. Don't punch holes in it with roads. Leave forest fires to burn. Leave spruce beetles to help the process of forest regeneration. Leave rivers to run free and to flood when the mood takes them.
Of course the "world's wealthiest nation and greatest consumer of resources" - the words are the author's - can't leave the wilderness alone. Such consumption requires massive oil and mineral extraction, timber cutting, control of the rivers for irrigation and power production. He observes that the "American wilderness has always existed in a social context, and if the populace at large cannot see the virtue of leaving large landscapes alone, intervention is sure to follow."
The book details unexpected alliances that mitigated the most destructive manifestations of intervention, and also pragmatic idealism. It's not an oxymoron. Some of the individuals profiled so ably in the book acquiesced, when necessary, to interventions in one wild place as a quid quo pro for legislation that left some other area unmolested. In instances where the heavy hand of the Army Corps of Engineers, or Bureau of Land Reclamation or commercial interests was unavoidable, these idealists fought for modifications that promised a less destructive impact on wilderness. They strove, in the words of the author, for a "vision of landscape in harmony with its population. " Without that vision, he concludes, "we are committed to overuse, incessant conflict and the decay of our dreams."
The book focuses on a particular geographic area of the United States. Though vast, the area is but a microcosm of the uphill battle fought on a global scale to preserve Earth's remaining wild places from the worst depredations of Man. For its near-universal lessons about the wilderness-development conundrum, "Where Roads . . . " deserves a place on library shelves the world over.