Maybe society should keep old Mother Trees around—instead of cutting most of them down—so they can naturally shed their seed and nurture their own seedlings. Maybe clear-cutting the old, even if they’re not well, wasn’t such a good idea. The dying still have much to give. We already knew the elders were habitat for old-growth-dependent birds and mammals and fungi. That old trees stored far more carbon than young ones. They protected the prodigious amounts hidden in the soil, and they were the sources of fresh water and clean air. Those old souls have been through great changes, and this
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