The California redwoods have long been the subject of conflict, but after 1970 the fights were transformed when citizens leveraged the courts to challenge California's corporatist timber regime, with its focus on timber production. The history of the legal campaign highlights the need to focus on local aspects of modern environmental history. Unlike the typical narrative about the nationalization and professionalization of modern environmental politics, the redwood battles reveal persistent insurgence, intense local activism, and the breakdown of a corporatist, production-focused governance tradition. The history of the legal fights over the redwoods also points to the national consequences, most of them unintended, of the local activism. The current literature prioritizes litigation efforts that enforced and clarified particular aspects of the modern environmental protection regime, not litigation that transformed governance. This essay focuses on the eight most important cases in the movement to reform California forestry governance. Because the local citizens' movement set its sights on the transformation of institutions, increased regulation of private property, and giant redwoods, it led to, and was part of, one of the most important environmental battles of the late twentieth century.
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Book
Sellers, Christopher C.;
(2012)
Crabgrass Crucible: Suburban Nature and the Rise of Environmentalism in Twentieth-Century America
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Farmer, Jared;
(2013)
Trees in Paradise: A California History
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Alagona, Peter S.;
(2008)
Homes on the Range: Cooperative Conservation and Environmental Change on California's Privately Owned Hardwood Rangelands
(/isis/citation/CBB000950064/)
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Anna Winterbottom;
(2021)
Becoming “Traditional”: A Transnational History of Neem and Biopiracy Discourse
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Haq, Gary;
Paul, Alistair;
(2011)
Environmentalism since 1945
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Dörries, Matthias;
(2011)
The Politics of Atmospheric Sciences: “Nuclear Winter” and Global Climate Change
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Botshon, Ann;
(2006)
Saving Sterling Forest: The Epic Struggle to Preserve New York's Highlands
(/isis/citation/CBB000950130/)
Thesis
Bevington, Douglas;
(2007)
The Rebirth of Environmentalism: Grassroots Activism and the New ConservationMovement, 1989--2004
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Egan, Michael;
(2012)
Barry Commoner's Place in History
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Doyle, Timothy;
(2013)
Environmental Movements around the World: Shades of Green in Politics and Culture
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Article
Bryan, William D.;
(2011)
Poverty, Industry, and Environmental Quality: Weighing Paths to Economic Development at the Dawn of the Environmental Era
(/isis/citation/CBB001034461/)
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Darren Frederick Speece;
Paul S. Sutter;
(2019)
Defending Giants: The Redwood Wars and the Transformation of American Environmental Politics
(/isis/citation/CBB502336211/)
Thesis
Siscawati, Mia;
(2012)
Social Movements and Scientific Forestry: Examining the Community Forestry Movement in Indonesia
(/isis/citation/CBB001567370/)
Book
Squatriti, Paolo;
(2013)
Landscape and Change in Early Medieval Italy: Chestnuts, Economy, and Culture
(/isis/citation/CBB001420355/)
Article
Bennett, Brett M.;
(2011)
A Global History of Australian Trees
(/isis/citation/CBB001034567/)
Article
Diego Molina;
(2022)
The Forced Retirement of a Hard Worker: The Rise and Fall of Eucalyptus in Bogotá
(/isis/citation/CBB951468294/)
Book
Tal, Alon;
(2013)
All the Trees of the Forest: Israel's Woodlands from the Bible to the Present
(/isis/citation/CBB001420351/)
Book
Rotherham, Ian D.;
(2013)
Trees, Forested Landscapes, and Grazing Animals: A European Perspective on Woodlands and Grazed Treescapes
(/isis/citation/CBB001422294/)
Chapter
Squatriti, Paolo;
(2010)
Trees, Nuts, and Woods at the End of the First Millennium: A Case from the Amalfi Coast
(/isis/citation/CBB001420421/)
Article
Sigurmundsson, Friðρór S.;
Gísladóttir, Guðrún;
Óskarsson, Hreinn;
(2014)
Decline of Birch Woodland Cover in Þjórsárdalur Iceland from 1587 to 1938
(/isis/citation/CBB001421932/)
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