The Power of Trees: How Ancient Forests Can Save Us If We Let Them

Forester Wohlleben (The Heartbeat of Trees) offers a pointed critique of harmful forestry practices and urges humans to let trees heal themselves. Excoriating government bureaucrats in his native Germany for their misguided attempts to help struggling forests, he describes how state-approved initiatives to introduce nonnative tree species better suited to warming temperatures than indigenous varieties have wreaked havoc on those ecosystems and devastated local animal and insect populations. Instead, Wohlleben suggests it’s usually best “to step aside and allow natural reforestation to take its course,” excepting for such instances as planting on former farmland “where there are no old trees nearby that could seed themselves.” As evidence, the author highlights trees’ remarkable capacity for adaptation and observes how, near his forest academy in west Germany, trees on south-facing slopes fared better during a 2020 drought than those on north-facing slopes because the former had “learned to ration water” from enduring longer, hotter periods of direct sunlight. The criticism of German forestry practices will be of limited interest to U.S. audiences, but the insights into trees’ surprising abilities captivates (Wohlleben contends that pedunculate and sessile oaks, once thought to be distinct, are likely a single species capable of changing the appearance of its leaves depending on the climate). Nature lovers should take note. (May)