A fascinating account that links early maritime history, Indigenous land rights, and modern environmental advocacy in the Clayoquot Sound region by award-winning author and historian Barry Gough. Centred on Meares Island, located near Tofino on Vancouver Island’s west coast, Possessing Meares Island weaves a unique history out of the mists of time by connecting eighteenth century Indigenous-colonial trade relations to more recent historical upheavals. Gough invites readers to enter a dramatic epoch of BC’s coastal history and watch the Nuu-Chah-nulth nations spearhead the maritime sea otter trade, led by powerful chiefs like Wicaninnish and Maquinna. Eventually, Meares Island declines into an economic backwater due to overhunting the sea otter, the bloody Clayoquot War of 1855, and most importantly, the proxy of empire—the Hudson’s Bay Company—establishing colonial roots in nearby Victoria. Caught up in the tides of change, the Treaty of 1846 ushers in a new era as the island is officially declared property of the British crown. Gough bridges the gap between centuries as he describes how the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council draw on this complicated history of ownership to invoke their legal claim to the land and defend the majestic wilderness from the indiscriminate clear-cut saw. Possessing Meares Island will not only appeal to history buffs, but to anyone interested in a momentous triumph for Indigenous rights and environmental protection that echoes across the nation today.

Sarah B. Pralle takes an in-depth look at why some environmental conflicts expand to attract a lot of attention and participation, while others generate little interest or action. Branching Out, Digging In examines the expansion and containment of political conflict around forest policies in the United States and Canada. Late in 1993 citizens from around the world mobilized on behalf of saving old-growth forests in Clayoquot Sound. Yet, at the same time only a very few took note of an even larger reserve of public land at risk in northern California. Both cases, the Clayoquot Sound controversy in British Columbia and the Quincy Library Group case in the Sierra Nevada mountains of northern California, centered around conflicts between environmentalists seeking to preserve old-growth forests and timber companies fighting to preserve their logging privileges. Both marked important episodes in the history of forest politics in their respective countries but with dramatically different results. The Clayoquot Sound controversy spawned the largest civil disobedience in Canadian history; international demonstrations in Japan, England, Germany, Austria, and the United States; and the most significant changes in British Columbia's forest policy in decades. On the other hand, the California case, with four times as many acres at stake, became the poster child for the "collaborative conservation" approach, using stakeholder collaboration and negotiation to achieve a compromise that ultimately broke down and ended up in the courts. Pralle analyzes how the various political actors—local and national environmental organizations, local residents, timber companies, and different levels of government—defined the issues in both words and images, created and reconfigured alliances, and drew in different governmental institutions to attempt to achieve their goals. She develops a dynamic new model of conflict management by advocacy groups that puts a premium on nimble timing, flexibility, targeting, and tactics to gain the advantage and shows that how political actors go about exploiting these opportunities and overcoming constraints is a critical part of the policy process.

A rare collection of articles that fuses academic theory, critique of practice and practical knowledge, Transforming Parks and Protected Areas analyzes and critiques the emerging issues in the design and operation of parks and protected areas.

For more than three decades, the fate of British Columbia’s old-growth forests has been a major source of political strife. While more than 5 million hectares of wood were being clearcut, the BC wilderness movement and forest industry supporters clashed, as they continue to do, both pressing their arguments in a variety of forums, ranging from television studios and logging road blockades to royal commission hearings and cabinet ministers’ offices. The resulting record of conflict confirms American historian Paul Hirt’s characterization of forest policy as "party an ideological issue, partly biological, partly economic, partly technical, and wholly political." Talk and Log is a comprehensive account of the rise and impact of the BC wilderness movement between 1965 and 1996. Jeremy Wilson examines the evolution of the movement’s approaches, evaluates the forest industry’s counterstrategies, and analyzes the patterns and trends underlying shifts in provincial government forest, environment, and parks policies. He describes the "war in the woods" triggered by environmentalists’ efforts to preserve areas such as South Moresby and the Carmanah Valley, and considers the complex forces that pushed the government to expand the protected areas system. Wilson’s perceptive analysis of Social Credit’s failed policies of the 1980s is followed by an assessment of the Harcourt NDP government’s reform iniatives, including the Commission on Resources and Environment (CORE) and the Forest Practices Code. Talk and Log is based on a variety of sources, including government documents, environmental group briefs, and interviews with several dozen politicians, government officials, environmentalists, and forest industry leaders. This book deftly illuminates the forces behind controversies that have divided British Columbians and drawn the attention of people around the world. It is also a thought-provoking examination of issues likely to dominate political debates in BC for decades to come.