Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest

by Suzanne Simard

In a decade, 18 million hectares of mature pine forest would be dead, representing about one-third of the forested area of British Columbia. The beetles would continue to chew their way through whitebark, western white, and ponderosa pines, through the United States from Oregon to Yellowstone, and would start infesting the jack-pine hybrids across the boreal forest of Canada, producing a total epidemic across North America in an area roughly the size of California, surpassing that of any insect outbreak in recorded history while providing fuel for devastating wildfires down the road. The beetles also infested plantations, especially those with fast-growing pines that had been weeded of their birch and aspen neighbors.

The oldest Rocky Mountain juniper is about 1,500 years old and the oldest whitebark pine around 1,300, in Utah and Idaho, respectively.