National Geographic Magazine May 2022

SPECIAL ISSUE: SAVING FORESTS DESPITE SEEING the forest for the trees, Suzanne Simard once faced harsh criticism for her groundbreaking work. The professor of forest ecology at the University of British Columbia bucked the prevailing theory that a forest’s trees were isolated individuals. Her experiments showed that trees live interdependently, sharing resources via belowground networks. Simard’s essay “Lives Depend on Forests” (page 15) emphasizes how ecosystems rely on those connections, a truth that’s at the root of this special issue. Forests keep our world in balance. They’re the “lungs” of the planet, drawing in carbon dioxide and breathing out oxygen. They provide habitat for countless species. And in a warming world, they’re our best chance for survival. Yet our forests are at risk. “It’s a tough time to be a tree,” senior environment writer…

LOOKING AT THE EARTH FROM EVERY POSSIBLE ANGLE…

I AM DRAWN TO THE serenity and sheer beauty of pristine nature. Being in it heightens my perceptions and narrows my focus. As I concentrate on the surroundings, an inner stillness fills me and helps me capture a sense of place. This was the case when I packed my camera equipment and ventured into some of Europe’s old-growth forests to highlight these unique environments that have remained intact for centuries, despite recurrent threats of human disturbance. The visits were often challenging because of unfavorable weather conditions and the distances I had to cover while going multiple times to the most photogenic locations. But the joy of the experience always prevailed. Hiking offtrail through the foggy laurel forests of Madeira, I was enveloped by trees that may have been up to 800…

IN THIS SECTION Seed Bank Alarm The First Forest Take to the Trees Ghostly Redwoods ● VANCOUVER ISLAND, BRITISH COLUMBIA THE HOLLOWED-OUT TRUNK of the ancient yellow cedar felt like a cocoon with its soft floor of bark strips. A mother bear had molded this bed when she came each year to hibernate and to birth her cubs inside the 2,000-year-old tree. In the depth of winter, the shell of sapwood had protected them from the bone-chilling cold and blowing snow. A decade earlier, the mother likely had been born in this same den, near the headwaters of Fairy Creek on Vancouver Island, off the coast of British Columbia. She would have returned each fall, fattened on berries and salmon. I picked one of her hairs from the grain of the wood, the scent…

When Suzanne Simard began working in forestry after college, conventional theory held that trees were isolated loners engaged in a cutthroat Darwinian competition for water, sunlight, and food. Timber companies planted rows of the most lucrative species and eradicated most of the competition—a “plantation” approach that Simard felt ignored the messy genius of nature, with its many interwoven species. In a series of breakthrough experiments conducted while dodging grizzly bears in western Canada’s rainforests, Simard discovered that trees are connected through vast fungal root systems known as mycorrhizal networks. Via this subterranean pipeline, they share carbon, water, and nutrients. The fungi extract sugars from the tree roots that they can’t produce on their own, and in return the fungi ferry water and nutrients to the tree roots and even farther, from…

A SURVEYING SLIPUP 140 YEARS AGO spared a patch of old-growth pine forest in northern Minnesota from the saws and axes of the region’s logging boom. Now the trees—the kind that once filled the area’s famed North Woods—are estimated at up to 400 years old. Most of the region’s forests may look mature, but many trees are less than a century old; settlers and lumber barons clear-cut much of the forest between the 1890s and 1920s. So how were more than 30 acres of old-growth pines missed? According to U.S. government records, in the winter of 1882, four surveyors headed into the thick forests to inventory land features. Cold and living roughly, they apparently rushed the job and made a mistake, categorizing as a lake the area that was actually forest…