Last Stands: A Journey Through North America's Vanishing Ancient Rainforests [Paperback]

Larry Pynn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 17, 2000

The remarkable Pacific temperate rainforest has become an endangered landscape, rarer than even the embattled tropical rainforest. In "Last Stands," award-winning environmental writer Larry Pynn plunges into coastal forests from California to Alaska to explore this unique ecosystem and the complex factors that threaten it. Whether standing with new-age loggers as they toil beneath the churning blades of a heli-logging operation, witnessing the wolverine's legendary ferocity, bouncing along in the back of a pickup with a couple of bear hunters, or embarking on a week-long solo hike through an uncharted wilderness, Pynn's approach to understanding North America's temperate rainforest--and the creatures and people connected to it--is as diverse and unconventional as the forest itself. The result is a fascinating book, one part impassioned travelogue and one part natural history.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Larry Pynn, a reporter for the Vancouver Sun, has spent his life among the old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest--and not just as a chronicler. When he was young, he writes in Last Stands, he labored on the "green chain" of a sawmill, a job in a lean economy that brought the possibility of earning enough for the motorcycles and cars of a teenager's dreams. Half a century later, Pynn harbors evident regret for his work, but his experience affords him an unusual depth of firsthand knowledge in exploring the controversies surrounding the temperate rain forest--a threatened ecosystem that has been much in the environmental news since the spotted owl first flushed into the public spotlight in the late 1980s. Although the forest is supposedly better protected now than in the past with updated logging regulations, it has still been trimmed to something like 13 percent of its former extent, and old-growth continues to fall at a terrific rate.

Having traveled the length of the rain forest from northern California to southern Alaska, Pynn turns in a report on this embattled ecosystem that rings with both hard data and anecdotes from loggers, Native Americans, forestry industry officials, and Canadian and U.S. government workers. Preserving the remaining forests and the wildlife they shelter will require much additional work, he reckons. And it will require overcoming the "obscenity of polarized debate" that turns the forest into an object of rhetoric rather than a living place. It is that real place, and not an abstraction, that Pynn celebrates in these pages. --Gregory McNamee

About the Author

Larry Pynn is the award-winning environmental reporter for the "Vancouver Sun" and the author of "The Forgotten Trail: One Man's Adventures on the Canadian Route to the Klondike" (Doubleday). He lives in Tsawwassen, British Columbia.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Oregon State University Press; 1 edition (January 17, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0870710273
• ISBN-13: 978-0870710278
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,433,813 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #33 in Books > Science & Math > Nature & Ecology > Ecosystems > Tropical

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Which book did you read, Kelowna?, September 12, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Last Stands: A Journey Through North America's Vanishing Ancient Rainforests (Paperback)

I wouldn't normally post a review of a book but I stumbled across the previous reader's opinion and could not let it rest unchallenged. Mr. (or Mrs.) Kelowna leaves readers with the impression that Pynn is a neophyte writer who went straight from Journalism 101 to attempting the arduous task of researching and authoring a book. Nothing could be further from the truth. Already the author of The Forgotten Trail: One Man's Adventure's on the Canadian Route to the Klondike, Pynn has spent almost three decades as a prominent and award-winning BC writer. His prose is crisp, concise, laced with humour and a genuine, down-to-earth human feel. And all while tackling a subject that, admittedly, would normally be as dry as a Prince George winter. Had Pynn authored the biology and chemistry texts of my high school years I might have chosen not to drop those courses. There are few people who can take a reader on a journey through often incomprehensible scientific data and make that reader feel welcome. While Pynn's environmentally left-of-centre leanings are perhaps evident when he affords himself the luxury of editorializing (and why not, it's his book!), he nevertheless provides evidence for and against both sides of an extremely important issue on the Pacific Coast...allowing the reader to make up his or her own mind. Overall, an excellent book for anyone looking to explore the current state of our temperate rainforests; it will make you laugh, perhaps make you weep, but ultimately enlighten you.

5.0 out of 5 stars A must read, April 21, 2004

By 

im shy (Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Last Stands: A Journey Through North America's Vanishing Ancient Rainforests (Paperback)

This book manages to be both easy to read and to reveal important and complex insights about the rainforests of North America. Pynn is a natural storyteller who weaves his experiences travelling and talking with everyone from loggers to scientists to create a compelling read. Highly recommended.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars The Last Word on Last Stands It's Not, July 7, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Last Stands: A Journey Through North America's Vanishing Ancient Rainforests (Paperback)

Although the subject matter of Pynn's book is fascinating--the last old growth stands of forest left in North America, Pynn's writing leaves a lot to be desired. Pynn, who cut his teeth writing small pieces for newspapers, needs to gain experience in writing full-length books before tackling another major topic. He does, however, provide a quick glimpse into an important topic, and one hopes that a more seasoned writer will carry the banner from here.