Inside Passage: A Journey Beyond Borders [Hardcover]

Richard Manning (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 2000

Protecting land in parks, safe from human encroachment, has been a primary strategy of conservationists for the past century and a half. Yet drawing lines around an area and calling it wilderness does little to solve larger environmental problems. As author Richard Manning puts it in a knowingly provocative way: "Wilderness designation is not a victory, but acknowledgement of defeat." In Inside Passage, Manning takes us on a thought-provoking tour of the lands along the Pacific Northwest's Inside Passage-from south-east Alaska down through Puget Sound, and then on to the northern Oregon coast and the Columbia River system-as he explores the dichotomy between "wilderness" and "civilisation" and the often disastrous effects of industrialisation. Through vivid description and conversations with people in the region, Manning brings new insights to the area's most pressing environmental concerns-the salmon crisis, deforestation, hydroelectric dams, urban sprawl-and examines various innovative ways they are being addressed. He details efforts to restore degraded ecosystems and to integrate economic development with environmental protection, and looks at powerful new tools such as Geographic Information Systems (GIS) that are increasingly being used to further conservation efforts. Throughout, Manning focuses on the hopeful possibility that we can redesign the human enterprise to a scale more appropriate to the nature that holds it, that rather than drawing borders around nature, we might instead start placing borders on human behaviour. Perhaps, he suggests, we can begin to behave in all places as if all places matter to us as much as wilderness, and, in the process, claim all of nature as our own. Inside Passage is a wide-ranging and thoughtful exploration by a gifted writer, and an important work for anyone interested in the Pacific Northwest, or concerned about the future of our relationship to the natural world.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Drawing a case study from the Pacific Northwest, where he makes his home, noted environmental journalist Richard Manning argues that long-practiced conservation strategies are not enough to protect wild lands, and that little can come from calling for more wilderness preservation when the lands beyond the wilderness are so ill used. "The fundamental problem," he writes, "is in the scale and nature of human development; rethinking our definition of wilderness seems an academic exercise in the face of real pollution, sprawl, mindlessness, and greed." That development, he continues, involves imposing an industrial model on the world's ecosystems, so that, in the case of the Northwest, rivers have been seen as factories that make fish and electricity, forests as factories that make timber, and mountains as factories that make ore. That model is not only incorrect, he says, but also dangerously misguided.

In a journalistic tour of the region, Manning makes a convincing argument for removing dams on sensitive waterways; looks into the alarmingly high hidden costs of salmon and shrimp farming; condemns the suburbanization of the mountain West in the face of "white flight" from California; and looks into the lumbering practice called clear-cutting, which, though pioneered in the 1950s (by the U.S. Forest Service), was not put into general practice until the late 1970s. Manning's notions that it is possible to foster an economy of "conservation-based development" and that "wilderness has outlived its usefulness" will doubtless provoke controversy in green circles, while his call to reduce consumption and treat habitats of all kinds with more care won't play well in certain boardrooms--all of which means that, in his role as gadfly, Manning has done his job. --Gregory McNamee

From Library Journal

The idea of wilderness conjures up lines or boundaries on a map, separating developed areas from those free of humanity's handiwork. It is an idea debated by environmentalists and politicians. Journalist Manning (Food's Frontier) argues for a new understanding: wilderness without borders. Calling for a rethinking of humanity's relationship with nature, he argues that nature is bigger than all of humankind and cannot be controlled. From Alaska to Puget Sound, traveling by plane, boat, and kayak and on foot, Manning interviewed people who live and work in the Pacific Northwest region known as the Inside Passage to explore the ties between a regional economy and ecology. Using his own keen observation, Manning pleads for a new understanding of conservation and economic development together, not as separate entities. This thought-provoking book is a welcome addition to the environmental bookshelf.DPatricia Ann Owens, Wabash Valley Coll., Mt. Carmel, IL
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 210 pages
• Publisher: Island Press; 1 edition (December 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1559636556
• ISBN-13: 978-1559636551
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,418,761 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Art of Zen Ecological Repair, May 27, 2001

By 

charles falk (Novato, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Inside Passage: A Journey Beyond Borders (Hardcover)

Richard Manning takes his readers on a very interesting journey into a new terrain of environmentalism hinted at by his subtitle, "A Journey Beyond Borders". Traveling by sea kayak and light plane, as well as by land, he paints a grim picture of environmental degradation along the "inside passage" between Astoria Washington and Juneau Alaska. At the same time he is pricking some of the hallowed sacred cows of the conservation establishment. The primary focus of this book is on the decline of the salmon along the Pacific slope of North America. In the process he explains its relationship to lumbering and dams. He also takes a fast tour of the ecological ruin caused by the exponential growth of aquaculture around the Pacific Rim. Manning describes himself as a science writer, but he excels at turning a mixture of personal observation, interviews, and historical data into a vivid picture of decline -- not only of the salmon and the forest -- but of the people who depended on them for a livelihood.

One of Manning's interesting conclusions is that, as the size and technological complexity of our food-producing and timber-harvesting efforts have increased, their efficiency has plummeted. A modern rancher in Idaho, using large quantities of subsidized water and energy, cannot begin to match the protein production of the wild salmon that once teemed the rivers of his state. His calves would have to grow into 50,000-pound cows in order to match the four-year weight gain of a wild salmon. The salmon harvested the bounty of the sea and returned it to the land without any expenditure of fossil fuel. Unfortunately, the salmon run in Idaho's Snake river has declined from 2,000,000 to less than 9,000 -- despite taxpayers spending, Manning says, "$3 billion on a Rube Goldbergian scheme of hatcheries, fish ladders, and barges that give young salmon a ride past the dams." We have traded a very efficient form of food production for a very inefficient one.

Manning adds his voice to the growing chorus that argue that salmon hatcheries are not just inefficient but counterproductive. The young hatchery salmon have a very low survival rate (100 return for each million released), but they still compete with remaining wild salmon for scarce resources in stream and ocean. The kind of conservation Manning espouses is being practiced at a former salmon hatchery in Chinook Washington. The local community took it over and has turned it into a center for long-term restoration not just of a wild salmon run, but also of the habitat in the clear-cut drainage around it.

Manning and his concept of borderless environmentalism is as radical as those who claim trees cause air pollution and Caspian terns are responsible for the decline in the Columbia salmon run. He thinks that most well-intentioned protectors of "wilderness" from Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot down to present-day conservationists have not adopted a sound strategy for presserving the environment. His point is that when you draw a line around a piece of land to protect it from clear-cutting and strip mining you are tacitly accepting those practices everywhere else. It also means that if one President has the power to protect an area like the Arctic Wildlife Refuge then another has the power to un-protect it. Manning's solution is for everyone, everywhere, to walk more lightly upon the land every day and perhaps to lend some help to small scale preservation activities in their own back yard. He reminds the reader that those areas of the west that we now revere as "wilderness" were occupied continuously by moderately-dense populations of human beings for ten thousand years before the coming of Lewis and Clark without any noticeable ecological damage. The real message of "Inner Passage" is that we must each internalize environmentalism in the inner passages of our soul.

I enjoyed Mr. Manning's novel analysis of the serious ecological problems outlined in this book and I admire his faith in a utopian soluction, but I don't share that faith. Too many of the people who conscientiously lend their effort and money to worthwhile enviromental causes still drive SUV's home to their 6000 sqaure-ft starter castles and a dinner of farm-raised prawns.

5.0 out of 5 stars We want it all, February 21, 2007

By 

Jay Warner (Racine, WI, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Inside Passage: A Journey Beyond Borders (Hardcover)

Richard Manning's book is frankly amazing. How he can maintain a coherent, collected mental state to write while 'connecting the dots' to such major ecological disasters is totally beyond my ken. Read the book. Follow Manning as he connects dots around the world, from Scotland to the Sacramento River in CA to Washington State and into Alaska. He has the data and the links.

The last chapter summarizes the position that we all must take: "We want it all." Meaning that we can no longer argue over the boundary of a protected area. Those who would use the land, or take the fish, in any way, must get our collective permission. They must do so with the greatest recognition possible of the effects - consequences - of their actions. And those consequences must be minimized before we permit them to use _our_ Earth. There will be less business activity, true. There will be a more livable Earth, also. As we learn how to accommodate our ecosystems, we will also learn how to sustain our wonderful lives (i. e., restore that business activity).

And we do want to continue living on this planet, don't we? Especially for our grandchildren. Your next step: read the book.

This may be a 'far out' position to take, but I agree with Manning. What's the alternative? Whoops! Too late!

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How to save the northwest, November 20, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Inside Passage: A Journey Beyond Borders (Hardcover)

Manning does for the Northwest what he did for the Prairie in his other great book, Grassland. Both are great reads.