The Politics of Ecosystem Management

Rating:
Summary: Good read, accessible and covers a lot
Review: I found this book to pretty well cover the issues without being overwhelming. It is intended to be an overview and the authors provide plenty of cited material for those wishing to delve deeper. I was not familiar with ecosystem management and the book gives a good presentation of the basic tenets, challenges, and suggested prescriptives in a well-organized fashion. I do not believe the authors meant the book to be anything more than a introductory text--it fills this purpose well.

Rating:
Summary: The Politics of Ecosystem Management
Review: This book provides a lot of information for a person not familar with politics and natural resources. Unfortunately, I do not think that this was the authors' intent. For a person familar with this subject, the book just repeats ideas you probably are currently familiar with in a choppy fashion. On top of this, the book seems biased with statements such as "traditional resource managemetn is pragmatic, seeing in nature a collection of resources that can be manipulated and harvested, with humans in control" while ecosystem management "views nature with some reverence and respect for the awsome complexity with which its components are interwoven." Overall, the book is an easy read, but does not provide the reader with much thought or new ideas.