It can be said that all of human history is environmental history, for all human action happens in an environment—in a place. This collection of essays explores the environmental history of the Pacific Northwest of North America, addressing questions of how humans have adapted to the northwestern landscape and modified it over time, and how the changing landscape in turn affected human society, economy, laws, and values. Northwest Lands and Peoples includes essays by historians, anthropologists, ecologists, a botanist, geographers, biologists, law professors, and a journalist. It addresses a wide variety of topics indicative of current scholarship in the rapidly growing field of environmental history.

Table of Contents:
Preface - Paul Hirt & Dale Goble 1) Setting the Pacific Northwest Stage: The Influence of the Natural Environment - Eric Ewert PART I: THIS PLACE 2) Place: An Argument for Bioregional History - Dan Flores 3) A Natural History of the Puget Sound Basin - Arthur Kruckeberg 4) From Where We Are Standing: The Sense of Place and Environmental History - William Lang 5) Willamette Eden: The Ambitious Legacy - William Robbins 6) Footprints and Pathways: The Urban Imprint on the Pacific Northwest - Carl Abbott PART II: FIRST PEOPLES 7) Salmon, Sedentism, and Cultivation: Toward an Environmental Prehistory of the Northwest Coast - Douglas Deur 8) Mobility as a Factor Limiting Resource Use on the Columbia Plateau - Eugene Hunn 9) Unusual Gardens: The Nez Perce and Wild Horticulture on the Eastern Columbia Plateau - Alan Marshall 10) Megafauna of the Columbia Basin, 1800-1840: Lewis and Clark in a Game Sink - Paul Martin & Christine Szuter 11) Land Divided: Yakima Tribal Land Use in the Federal Allotment Era - Barbara Wester PART III: RIVERS 12) Salmon in the Columbia Basin: From Abundance to Extinction - Dale Goble 13) The Northwest's Hydroelectric Heritage - Michael Blumm 14) Fish First! The Changing Ethics of Ecosystem Management - Carolyn Merchant PART IV: AGRICULTURE 15) Ecological Influences of the Introduction of Livestock on Pacific Northwest Ecosystems - Kathleen Dwire, Bruce McIntosh, & Boone Kauffman 16) Environmental Change in the Northern Rockies: Settlement and Livestock Grazing in Southwestern Montana - William Wyckoff & Katherine Hansen 17) Creating a Hybrid Landscape: Irrigated Agriculture in Idaho - Mark Fiege 18) Cultural Perceptions of the Irrigated Landscape in the Pacific Northwest - Dorothy Zeisler-Vralsted PART V: FORESTS 19) Human and Ecological Change in the Inland Northwest Forests - Nancy Langston 20) Getting Out the Cut: A History of National Forest Management in the Northern Rockies - Paul Hirt 21) Changing Forests, Changing Needs: Using the Pacific Northwest's Westside Forests, Past and Present - Thomas Cox PART VI: MINING 22) Mining, Environment, and Historical Change in the Island Northwest - Katherine Morrissey 23) Western Smelters and the Problem of Smelter Smoke - Katherine Aiken Epilogue: Environmental History and Human Perception - William Dietrich Contributors Index