| Book Review | Environmental History, 11.4

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| Book Review | Environmental History, 11.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

George W. Bush's Healthy Forests: Reframing the Environmental Debate. By Jacqueline Vaughn and Hanna J. Cortner. Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2005. xii + 231 pp. Notes, index. Paper $24.95.
In August, 2002, President George W. Bush flew to southern Oregon, where the largest wildfire of the year was still smoldering, to announce what he called a "common sense policy" to prevent massive forest fires. His "Healthy Forests Initiative" (HFI) included a number of measures with a single stated objective: to remove the dry dead wood and understory that turns western forests into tinderboxes. It was simple, he insisted: "If you let kindling build up, and there's a lightning strike, you're going to get yourself a big fire."	1
The situation was far more complex, contend J. Vaughn and H. Cortner in their insightful study, George W. Bush's Healthy Forests. The president's solution to forest fires was even more convoluted—intentionally so, claim the authors. The massive thinning project the president had in mind would not take place in the forest but in the federal regulatory process. It is a system that, depending on your politics, protects the environment from rapacious industries, or allows eco-extremists to bring the engines of progress to a halt. What's more, argue Vaughn and Cortner, the president intended to use HFI as an opening to "reframe ... the entire environmental policy agenda" of the nation (p. 2).	. . .

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