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

The trailblazing scientist returns with a book that centres nature’s cycles of renewal in the future vision of our forests

When the forest breathes out, we breathe in. When the forest thrives, we thrive.

The world-renowned forest ecologist Suzanne Simard has transformed our understanding of the profound intelligence and interconnectedness of trees. In When the Forest Breathes, she uncovers how the deep-rooted cycles of renewal that sustain the forest can also help us to protect our entire global ecosystem.

Raised in a family of loggers committed to sustainable stewardship of the land, Simard has watched as timber companies leave the forests of her native British Columbia vulnerable to wildfires and drought, threatening the crucial biodiversity that they support. But her groundbreaking research for the Mother Tree Project – one of the most ambitious forest ecology experiments of its kind – has the potential to chart a new course. The forest, she reveals, is a living symphony of finely honed cycles of birth, growth, death and rebirth that hold the key to protecting the natural world. Working closely with local Indigenous communities, whose sustainable practices have been largely ignored, Simard examines how holistic, regenerative forestry that preserves the cycles of the forest can help solve the global climate crisis.

Weaving together scientific discoveries and luminous storytelling, Simard’s book is a call to rediscover our kinship with the natural world, and listen to the lessons of the forest.