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Book Review – The Olympic Rain Forest

I have spent a decent amount of time reading about ecological systems in far away places like the jungles of Peru, so when I came across this book on an environment just a few hours away, I decided it was time to better learn about the ecologies I am more likely to photography.

The book The Olympic Rain Forest: An Ecological Web is about the same size as your standard photography book and was written by two individuals who have spent a large amount of time in the forest.  I was quite excited to read this book, as similar writings that covered the diversity of the forests were extremely interesting and now I had the opportunity to broaden my knowledge of my own backyard!

While I did learn a number of new things from the book, I have to say that overall I was disappointed.  The book focused strongly on the trees, which are obviously a very important aspect of the forest.  I was unaware previously of the work of ‘nurse logs’ and how logs washed all the way to Hawaii were of importance to the Hawaiian chiefs, but I feel the animal and insect life of the forest was neglected.

The book did discuss the animals of the forest, but for the most part they discussed how they interacted with the forest.  For instance, there was quite a bit of information on how elk control growth levels of many plants.  While many species of animals were discussed, I felt that the most valuable information – how they are all interdependent on each other and the peculiarities of some of the species, were not covered very well.

Certainly the olympic rain forests do not have the same animal and insect diversity of the tropical jungles, but this book seems to have resigned itself to that fate, rather than go into detail on what it does have. 

I did find this book interesting, and I feel that it piqued my interest in the Olympic rain forests.  However, the book left me wanting to know a lot more and feeling that the things I am most interested in were not covered well.  There are a number of other books on these forests and I hope to find one that covers the animal and insect life there better, as these are the subjects I hope to cover when I go there.

Still, if you are interested in the roles that trees play in the Olympic rain forest, this is a very good book.  I do have to say that I was interested while reading, and quickly finished the book, but I would have liked to see a lot more.

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Tags: book, book review, olympic, rain forest, The Olympic Rain Forest, trees