When the Forest Breathes

With her bestselling book Finding the Mother Tree, forest ecologist Suzanne Simard advanced a revelatory new paradigm for the profound intelligence and interconnectedness of trees. Now, with When the Forest Breathes, she uncovers the ways that nature’s deep-rooted cycles of renewal can ensure the longevity of threatened ecosystems.
 
Raised in a family of loggers committed to sensible forest stewardship, Simard has watched timber companies plunder the forest for profit. Ignoring Indigenous communities’ abundant knowledge of the natural world and its rich complexities, they leave in their wake an environment more prone to wildfire, water crisis, and plant and animal life extinction.
 
But Simard’s research has the potential to chart a new course. The forest, she reveals, is a symphony of finely honed cycles of regeneration—from mushrooms breaking down logs to dying elder trees passing their genetic knowledge to younger ones—that hold the key to protecting our forests from the threats of logging and climate change. Leading one of the most ambitious climate research initiatives ever undertaken, Simard and her team examine how various human interventions—particularly loggers’ destruction of the overstory’s mother trees—affect new growth and fire risk in her native British Columbia. Working closely with local Indigenous communities, whose models of responsible forest stewardship have been largely dismissed, they unearth groundbreaking findings that, if implemented, could ensure the survival of these ecosystems for generations to come.