When the Forest Breathes: Renewal and Resilience in the Natural World

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, leaving in their wake an ecosystem at higher risk for wildfire, water crises, and plant and animal extinction. But her 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 examines how human interventions--particularly loggers' destruction of the overstory's mother trees--affect new growth in her native British Columbia. Working closely with local Indigenous communities, whose models of responsible forestry have been largely dismissed, she unearths groundbreaking findings that, if implemented, could ensure the survival of these ecosystems for generations to come.

As she considers how older living things facilitate the conditions for new growth to flourish, Simard faces parallel rhythms of loss and regeneration in her own life, watching her two daughters grow into young women and savoring her final days with her ailing mother. Animated by wonder and hope for our planet's endangered places and the intricate practices of caretaking that have sustained them for millennia, When the Forest Breathes is a vital reminder of all the natural world has to teach us about adaptability, resilience, and community.