Austral Ecology (2004) 29, 684–688 Book Reviews Towards Forest Sustainability David B. Lindenmayer and Jerry F. Franklin (eds). CSIRO Publishing, Collingwood, Victoria, Australia, 2003, 231 pages. Price AUD$39.95. ISBN 155963 381 6 (softcover). ‘Provocative’ would be a fair word to use to describe this collection of 12 essays on developing sustainable forest management, presented at a Forestry Round- table Meeting held in Marysville, Victoria, Australia, in 2002. David Lindenmayer and Jerry Franklin are the editors, as well as authors of several of the articles. They are of course among the most prominent scientists in the world in devising new ways of maintaining bio- diversity in forests, Lindenmayer primarily in Victoria and Franklin in the moist temperate forests of the Pacific North-west. There are four articles each on North America and Australia–New Zealand, and two on Scandinavia. No presentations are given from tropical countries – although swidden agriculture with long forest fallows was employed for thousands of years, it’s pure form seems to be disappearing under population pressure. Would there be examples of reasonably sustainable forest management in the tropics? The main discussions are in two areas: 1. What should be the model for production of wood for the world’s needs? Should this wood come mostly or completely from plantations? If all remaining native forests go into reserves then how should they be managed, and how will these new systems be paid for? 2. If native forests are still used for timber production how can they simultaneously be managed for maximum biodiversity? Readers of Austral Ecology may not agree with Franklin’s suggestion that the Southern Hemisphere holds an advantage in its ability to grow trees and should therefore be the main location of ‘fibre farms’. He argues that production by exotic species can be very high in this hemisphere and ‘many of the sites have been previously used for agriculture or grazing so costs of preparing sites or mitigating environmental impacts is often low’. In fact establishing new trees on former pasture sites, particularly in the subtropics and tropics, is particularly difficult and expensive. The book contains a fascinating discussion by the American conservation biologist Michael Soule of the role of large mammals in US forests. He examines the history of large-scale extinctions, beginning with loss of megafauna about 13 000 years ago and up to and including the still-applied programs of predator control in western states. Yellowstone National Park is one of the oldest national parks and is a case study of an ‘ecosystem-out-of-balance’. In Yellowstone, elk and moose are herbivores whose populations have expanded greatly and have had follow-on effects: in wetter areas moose have had heavy impacts on willows, leading to loss of beaver populations and lowered water tables. Wolves were reintroduced in 1995 and seem to be taking some pressure off plant resources. Likewise, white-tailed deer have run rampant over the Midwest and East of the US, damaging forest understorey plant diversity and holding back regeneration of many trees species. Measures other than reintroducing wolves in such heavily populated (human) areas will have to be found. Most of the chapters deal with the major issues in managing forests for wildlife conservation and wood production: retaining live and dead hollow or habitat trees, reserving corridors, leaving or creating new reserves in the matrix of ‘working’ forests, mixing size and age classes across the landscape. ‘Adaptive management’ is a key phrase these days, meaning that we can change management practices as knowledge improves. It is something most writers here favour. Fitting this principle into a policy framework is not easy and several of the authors discuss the relevant policy challenges. Too loose a system could threaten the loss of species; too restrictive and prescriptive a regime could prevent the development of new systems which actually meet biodiversity and production goals. Overall, this is an excellent and inexpensive intro- duction to the major issues involved in moving towards sustainable forest management. DOLAND NICHOLS School of Environmental Science and Management, Sustainable Forestry Program, Southern Cross University, Lismore, New South Wales, Australia Email: dnichols@scu.edu.au Population Ecology: First Principles J. H. Vandermeer and D. E. Goldberg. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, USA, 2003, xxiv + 280 pages. Price AUD$68.00 (paperback). ISBN 0691 11441 2. Population ecology offers a theoretical and mathe- matical underpinning for a diverse range of theoretical