Book Reviews -- Culture, Conflict, and Communication in the Wildland-Urban Interface Edited by Alan Ewert, Deborah Chavez and Art Magill

Ewert, Alan; Chavez, Deborah; and Magill, Art (Eds.). (1993). Culture, conflict, and communication in the wildland-urban interface. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, ISBN 0-8133-8440-0, $49.95 softcover, 410 pp.The conventional definition of the wildland-urban interface is an area where urban and wildland landscapes occur near or adjacent to each other (Bradley, 1984). In some situations, relatively large expanses of nature and urbanity are dichotomized and segregated with sharp lines of demarcation. This classic interface can be seen anywhere human development abuts a designated park, forest, or otherwise natural area (Davis, 1990). Everywhere else, the location of the interface is more fuzzy. In these areas the interface is best thought of as an ecotone (Ewert, 1993), an area of transition between two socio-ecological communities. In the ecotone, land use patterns can vary from predominantly natural landscapes with scattered developments, as is common within the national forests, to urban areas with islands of nature protected in municipal parks and greenways. Thus, the interface can be as thin as a boundary line or as wide as several hundred miles.The interface is also the point at which landscape changes are occurring most rapidly. While in a few areas wildlands are being restored and reclaimed from industrial sites, farms, ranches, and other areas in which development has run its course, the story is usually one of steady, incremental, and relentless transformation of wild nature -- the humanization of the landscape.The interface is interesting to us as a point of tension that says much about the human-nature relationship. Like the frontier, the interface sparkles as a geographic symbol of what is good and bad about North American culture and the environment. It marks how far we have come and what we have sacrificed to get here. It also represents human constraint and the extent to which we are willing to limit growth for the sake of other values. The concept of the wildland-urban interface is rich and multifaceted. It has not, however, received much scholarly attention.Culture, conflict, and communication in the wildland-urban interface is a collection of thirty essays by well-known scholars in the field of recreation and leisure. Other disciplines represented include rural sociology, social ecology, forestry, and natural resource policy. The overriding message that emerges is captured in an essay written by William R. Burch in which he asserts that the wildland-urban interface serves as "a benchmark for how to live better with nature and ourselves."The editors, social scientists with the USDA Forest Service, have attempted to bring together original essays that explore a variety of interface issues and problems. The choice of outdoor recreation and leisure scholars for most of the essays is indicative of the background of the editors.The book is divided into seven parts. Each part is introduced and summarized by the editors. Part I provides a brief overview meant to lay the foundation for the ensuing essays. Part 2 explores the role cultural diversity and ethnicity play in the wildland-urban interface. Essays cover theory and research on the delivery of wildland recreation opportunities to culturally diverse populations, along with specific research on the leisure values and environmental attitudes of diverse groups. Part 3 includes discussions of the communication problems presented by language and cultural differences, along with strategies for effective cross-cultural communication, and recent advances in persuasion theory as applied to the interface. Part 4 explores the relationship of place, activity, participant characteristics, and social context. Part 5 covers topics such as multicultural responsiveness among land managing agencies, cultural foundations of environmental attitudes, perspectives of Forest Service employees towards cultural resources, and a review of land ethic research with diverse groups. …