With a little effort, we could apply a more sustainable method by encouraging the development of the highly coevolved mycorrhizal relationships. Instead, foresters ignored the mycorrhizas, or—worse—killed them with fertilizer and irrigation in the seedling nursery, and focused only on those fungi that damaged or killed big trees, the pathogens. Those parasitic fungal species that infected roots and stems, damaged wood, and sometimes killed trees. The pathogenic fungi could, in short order, cost the industry a big whack of money.
