Suzanne Simard

…Wildfires have become an ever bigger problem in Canada. …When logging companies clear forest, they replant it with fast-growing conifer species, but these trees are much more flammable than Canada’s diverse, native forest. …But deforested areas do not fully recover, and thanks to logging, the wildfires and a devastating pine beetle outbreak, Canada’s forests, once a vast carbon sink, have since 2001 been a net emitter of carbon. For four decades, Simard, a professor of forest ecology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, has been trying to convince foresters and policymakers that it doesn’t have to be this way. ..Simard says she sometimes feels straitjacketed by science, which moves too slowly to meet the urgency of the climate crisis. …In her latest book, When the Forest Breathes, as in her first, Simard blends science and memoir, a stylistic choice that reflects how closely her personal life and the forest entwine.