Blazing Heritage is the only comprehensive account of how fire has been managed - and not managed - in the national parks. Beginning with the establishment of Yellowstone and continuing into the twenty-first century, the book shows how America's sacred landscapes were shoehorned into a management system that started in the national parks, but developed outside of their boundaries.
National parks played a unique role in the development of wildfire management on American public lands. With a different mission and powerful meaning to the public, the national parks were a psychic battleground for the contests between fire suppression and its use as a management tool. Blazing Heritage tells how the national parks shaped federal fire management.
Considering the aggregate of books about fire, this volume's importance is its concentration on national park lands. A weighty addition to the shelf of environmental history books.
