Borneo Log: The Struggle for Sarawak's Forests (Hardcover)

by William W. Bevis (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal
Winner of the 1995 Western States Book Award for Creative Nonfiction, this work tells of the adverse effects of rain-forest destruction on native populations. Bevis (Ten Tough Trips: Montana Writers and the West, Univ. of Washington Pr., 1990) describes the conditions he saw and the people he met while on sabbatical in Borneo. "This is a book not so much about the native resistance to logging as a series of stories from inside that struggle," he writes. The author is not an environmentalist but rather an English professor at the University of Montana who has a strong interest in protecting the environment. Clear and easy to read, Borneo Log is recommended for public and school libraries.?Amy L. Paster, Pennsylvania State Univ. Lib., University Park
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 245 pages
• Publisher: University of Washington Press (October 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0295974168
• ISBN-13: 978-0295974163
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,300,092 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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  #3 in	Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Agricultural Sciences > Forestry > Deforestation
  #97 in	Books > Outdoors & Nature > Ecology > Rain Forests

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Third World resources feed First World consumption and waste, November 10, 1996

By A Customer

This is a story written in diary format by the author who after a year as an exchange professor at Tokyo University spent part of the next year living with native activists fighting the resistance to Japanese logging, and Japanese timber camp managers, on Borneo,the third largest island on earth which lies just north of the Indonesian archipelago in the South China Sea. This is a poignant travel narrative as well as a serious environmental study of the exploitation of third world resources. The true irony of the story of Borneo's rapdily disappearing rainforest, and the local corruption and greed which siphon off most of the profits, while native rights and land uses are obliterated, (sounds like America in the early 19th century!) is that most of the timber shipped to Japan is used to feed Japan's wholesale adoption of American habits: buy it, use it, throw it away, buy another! Much of the wood is being used to make cheap furniture and plywood forms for concrete that are thrown away after several uses. Unlike America's own trees on vast land masses,Japan has little to support such habits. This is really another story which is symptomatic of first world countries exploitation of third world resources - and the hypocrisy of the United States' condemnation of such practices.