Ebook: Clearcutting the Pacific Rain Forest: Production, Science, and Regulation

"Clearcutting the Pacific Rain Forest" integrates class, environmental and political issues to provide a unique perspective on the controversy surrounding clearcutting and other forest practices. By examining the changes that took place in logging as a result of technological and managerial innovation as well as regulatory initiatives, Richard A. Rajala argues that the development of forest practice served corporate rather than social or ecological ends. Rajala first looks at the technological and managerial structures of workers and resource exploitation. From the introduction of steam-powered overhead logging methods in 1930 to the complete mechanization of logging in the postwar period, innovation was driven by a concept of industrial efficiency that responded to changing environmental conditions, product and labour markets but at the same time sought to advance operators' class interests by routinizing production. The managerial component developed pargely following the expansion of logging engineering programmes in the region's universities. Graduates of these programmes introduced rational planning procedures to coastal logging, which contributed to a rate of deforestation and resulted in a corporate call for technical forestry expertise. The second part of the study examines clearcutting from ecological, scientific and political history perspectives. Rajala looks at the factory regime's impact on the ecology of Douglas-fir forests and assesses what role knowledge played in the regulation of cutting practices. His analysis of businss-government relations in British Columbia, Washington and Oregon suggests that the reliance on the revenues generated by the forest industry encouraged regulations that favoured the forestry companies.