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The fires that have made national news every summer of the twenty-first century have been a wakeup call to citizens of the West. We are all potential victims of fire unless we establish a new way of living with its threat. This timely new book by an environmental journalist with advanced degrees in forestry offers readers a partnership role not just with firefighters but with fire itself. Designed to help westerners understand the Wildfire Danger Zone in the Rocky Mountain states, it focuses closely on New Mexico and Colorado, going beyond technical questions to larger life-style issues. Beginning with discussions of the general properties of wildfire, the ways residents can minimize property damage, and lessons for how to avoid conflagrations such as those that have devastated the mountain communities of Los Alamos and Durango, In Fire’s Way proposes the formation of partnerships at the local, state, and federal levels to manage fire for the health of local ecosystems. Fire management is inevitably controversial. Proposals for reducing combustibility by increasing commercial logging are as offensive to some citizens as increased government regulations are to others. Prescribed and controlled burns are essential but frightening, especially since the Cerro Grande fire of , a prescribed burn that got away from its crew. As the rural West attracts more and more suburbanites who expect and desire government agencies to keep them safe, ranchers and farmers are increasingly vocal in their opposition to federal regulations and regulators. This book offers the first review of proven methods to create cooperation among these diverse westerners to plan jointly for reducing the dangers of wildfire. University of New Mexico Press www.unmpress.com 800-249-7737 ™xHSKIMGy320964zv*:+:!:+:! ISBN 0-8263-2096-1 ENVIRONMENT Cover photograph: Mark Downey/© Getty Images, Inc. Cover Design: Melissa Tandysh Tom Wolf is a native westerner and independent ecologist. He lives in Taos, New Mexico. “After the wildfires of 2002, this book is a must read for policy makers and citizens interested in sensible alternatives for managing fire. Tom Wolf’s excellent writing style makes it clear that more federal dollars are not the solution and that local input is crucial. If Congress and the administration would follow what Wolf prescribes, we would be much closer to solving the wildfire crisis in the West.” —Terry L. Anderson, Executive Director, PERC and Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution “Skeptical that we’ll be able to extinguish our rapidly expanding wildfires by dumping money on them, Tom Wolf calls for a new approach to living in the Wildfire Danger Zone: learn to live in the fire-adapted ecosystems of the West. His book will tell you how, but more than that, it will make you think about personal responsibility, good land management, and more ways to reduce our reliance upon the Nanny State.” —Donald Snow, Mellon Professor of Environmental Studies, Whitman College ...

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