The Trees Are Speaking
Dispatches from the Salmon Forests
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- $28.99
Publisher Description
A call to rethink our relationship with forests
Ancient and carbon-rich, old-growth forests play an irreplaceable role in the environment. Their complex ecosystems clean the air, purify the water, cool the planet, and teem with life. In a time of climate catastrophe, old-growth and other natural forests face existential threats caused by humans—and their survival is crucial to ours.
In a bicoastal journey, environmental journalist Lynda V. Mapes connects the present and future of Pacific Northwest forests to the hard-logged legacy forests of the northeastern United States. Beginning in Oregon and Washington, where old growth supports, and is supported by, the region’s salmon, we meet Jerry Franklin, who led scientists in recognizing and studying the distinctiveness of these majestic spaces. From there, we journey to Vancouver Island, where Indigenous activists and scientists strive to preserve the health of Nuu-chah-nulth traditional homelands amid continued clearcutting. On the East Coast, we see the corduroy patterns of lands that have been logged for generations, leaving industrial carnage along formerly life-filled waterways. Mapes interviews Penobscot elders and scientists whose new practices are restoring the fish runs, as well as loggers using new technologies to harvest more sustainably.
With vibrant storytelling supported by science and traditional ecological knowledge, Mapes invites readers to understand the world where trees are kin, not commodities. The Trees Are Speaking is essential reading for those with a deep interest in environmental stewardship, Indigenous land rights, and the urgent challenges posed by climate change.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"What is being wrought in our forests... is an apocalypse of hot drought, fire, bugs, pestilence, and death," according to this chilling warning. Examining the delicate relationships within coastal forest ecosystems, Seattle Times environmental reporter Mapes (Orca) explains that salmon die after spawning, transferring nutrients from their bodies to the soil where they're drawn up by trees, while fallen logs in turn "provide hiding, resting, and feeding places for salmon." Lumber farms threaten this equilibrium, Mapes contends, suggesting that clearing forestland to plant expansive tracts of individual tree species leaves the land more susceptible to wildfires and doesn't produce the biodiversity required for a flourishing ecosystem. Mapes highlights the work of individuals striving to prevent such destruction, describing how University of British Columbia ecologist Suzanne Simard's research has shown that cutting down natural forests makes it more difficult for new trees to grow by disrupting the subterranean fungal networks that trees rely on to distribute nutrients to one another, and how Dan Kusnierz, a resources manager for the Penobscot Nation, cleans up pollutants spewed into Maine's Penobscot River by paper mills. The enlightening ecological discussions highlight the delicate balancing acts that undergird thriving forests, and the profiles provide reason for optimism. Nature lovers will be galvanized to stand up for more robust forest protections. Photos.
