THE POWER OF TREES

The author of The Hidden Life of Trees returns with a book that shows how trees help each other and us.

A highly experienced German forest manager with keen insight, Wohlleben persuasively describes the beauty, complexity, and resilience of natural forests versus the planted monospecies “plantations” dominating Germany’s arboreal landscapes. Illustrating for lay readers the work of Suzanne Simard, the pioneering ecologist who demonstrated the remarkable ability of trees to communicate via networks of roots and fungi, Wohlleben shows us how trees thrive in diverse, untamed communities—and how vulnerable they become when isolated from other trees. “Trees…are not life-forms that stand there and suffer as human activity changes the global climate,” he writes. “Rather, they are creatures rooted in their environments that react when conditions threaten to get out of control.” The author is less persuasive in his claim forests cannot be “managed” to thrive while being culled for considerable amounts of wood (the most sustainable large-scale building material, as it can sequester carbon while steel and concrete emit it). Wohlleben contends that it is “impossible to extract raw materials in a way that benefits nature”; that German forest-industry politics would get in the way even if it were possible; that wood doesn’t last long, anyway. However, his sourcing is thin, as it has occasionally been in earlier books. Many agree with Wohlleben that trees are a key weapon in the war against climate change, but many also contend that wood can be safely drafted into the war—that humans, like trees, can collaborate with nature.

Good introductory reading for those interested in the role of trees—and wood—in climate change.