From our collaborating partner “Living on Earth,” public radio’s environmental news magazine, an interview by host Steve Curwood and Jenni Doering with forest scientist Suzanne Simard.
You might remember the name Suzanne Simard from a few years back when she wrote the New York Times bestselling book “Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest,” about her research showing that the biggest and oldest trees in the forest anchor networks of social connection among the trees, and indeed the whole forest ecosystem. It was a breakthrough and not without some controversy to regard trees as having some kind of collective consciousness.
Now, Simard is back with her latest book, “When the Forest Breathes: Renewal and Resilience in the Natural World,” based in part on her latest research with colleagues including Indigenous communities, that further documents how older trees nurture younger saplings. Simard is a professor of forest ecology at the University of British Columbia and works in B.C.’s towering forests, where logging has taken all but 3 percent of the original old-growth trees.
She is intent on saving what’s left, and developing more sustainable logging methods to allow old “mother trees” to thrive in those forests, not only helping trees, but also the rest of us. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
