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 affected their genes. Through the changes, they’d gathered crucial wisdom, and they offered this up to their offspring—providing protection, laps into which the new
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