When the Forest Breathes: Renewal and Resilience in the Natural World

by Suzanne Simard

The trailblazing scientist who pioneered the concept of sophisticated communication between trees returns with a book that places nature’s own cycles of renewal at the center of a powerful vision for the future of our forests

With her bestselling book Finding the Mother Tree, forest ecologist Suzanne Simard introduced the world to the profound intelligence and interconnectedness of trees. Now, with When the Forest Breathes, she uncovers the ways that nature’s deep-rooted cycles of renewal can ensure the longevity of threatened ecosystems.

Raised in a family of loggers committed to sensible forest stewardship, Simard has watched as timber companies leave forests at higher risk for wildfires, water crises, and plant and animal extinction. But her research has the potential to chart a new course. The forest, she reveals, is a symphony of finely honed cycles of regeneration—from mushrooms breaking down logs to dying elder trees passing their genetic knowledge to younger ones—that hold the key to protecting our forests. Working closely with local Indigenous communities, whose models of responsible forestry have been largely dismissed, Simard examines how human interventions—particularly destruction of the overstory's mother trees—endanger new growth and longevity. If we can honor the tools that trees have honed for sharing intergenerational wisdom, she argues, we can protect these sacred places for many years to come.

As she considers how older living things facilitate the conditions for new growth to flourish, Simard faces parallel rhythms of loss and regeneration in her own life, watching her two daughters grow into adults and savoring her final days with her ailing mother. Animated by wonder for our forests and the intricate practices of caretaking that have long sustained them, When the Forest Breathes is a vital reminder of all the natural world has to teach us about adaptability, resilience, and community.

Genres: Nonfiction, Nature, Science, Ecology, Environment, Memoir, Natural History

336 pages, Hardcover

First published March 31, 2026

About the author

She is a pioneer on the frontier of plant communication and intelligence; and has been hailed as a scientist who conveys complex, technical ideas in a way that is dazzling and profound. Her work has influenced filmmakers (the Tree of Souls in James Cameron’s Avatar) and her TED talks have been viewed by more than 10 million people worldwide.

Reviews

[Stephen the Bookworm · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is surely to be a Top Read of 2026 🌳🌲🌳🌲

Suzanne Simard is a remarkable person; she and her colleagues and friends' research and scientific investigation into the lives of trees; the communication between them and their life cycles is truly astounding- forever changing the global view of the natural world.

However, the journey she has taken to try and fight against the climate crisis and ensure that we fully understood the benefit to human kind of ancient woodlands has not been ( and still isn't ) an easy one- the continual battle from logging companies, governments and scientific bodies ( jealousy and funding by big business? ) who undermine her views and evidence has made for a difficult time. But she has persevered.

This book describes her research and the challenges she and her team encountered whilst trying to develop the Mother Tree Project - the work alongside First Nation people of Canada and the cultivating of ancient wisdoms is very powerful to read. When such proven knowledge of centuries is disregarded by so many , insanity prevails- Scientists are perceived as the new Gods. The need to de-mechanise forestry work and the clear understanding that ancient trees are needed for clean air and water and rebirth of new trees is paramount.

This is part autobiography, travelogue, compendium to her previous book and a plea to all readers that we must try to show solidarity against the shocking outcomes of clear cutting in Canadian forest land and forests globally- the impact of the destruction is clear but still prevails( but there are some small steps in the right direction.)

Incredibly readable, full of information that you will want to tell others but most of all a book about humanity's need to wake up NOW before our planet is irreversibly ruined. You'll also be seething with frustration .Very moving and also heart breaking too as Suzanne also reflects upon personal grief..

If there were world leaders with a gram of Suzanne's Simard's understanding and knowledge of the impact of forest destruction and what can be done to reverse the decline and save global forest then the world might stand a chance... we can but hope a new generation of young politicians will see what needs to be done before it's too late. Suzanne's work should be a manifesto for the future.

Highly recommended

[Beck Marshall · Rating 4 out of 5]

When the Forest Breathes examines the fascinating Mother Tree project orchestrated by Suzanne Simard. I really enjoyed the mix of scientific process with personal stories. It results in a read that makes you feel grounded in our role in the greater natural world and eager to protect forests from not just the dangers of clear-cut logging but also the smaller acts of forest degradation that lead to unhealthy, carbon-limited, and carbon-sequestering forest ecosystems.

[Julia Shelburne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is part research findings and part memoir, which I thoroughly appreciated. I enjoyed reading about Simard's experiences with her colleagues and family; she describes the forest so incredibly well to the extent that I felt like I was experiencing the Douglas firs with her despite being here in Texas. Simard's research is easy to understand, especially with regard to the devastating effects of clearcutting. Even with my environmental science background and research on enzymatic activity in riparian soil for carbon sequestration, I was delighted to learn even more about carbon sinks.

I also appreciated Simard's reverence for the wisdom of Indigenous peoples who are interconnected with the Canadian forests. Simard mentions tribal law and sovereignty in relation to Canadian provincial law, as well as lasting impacts of colonialism, though I would have liked more discussion about how those interact (or do not) for readers to have a better understanding of jurisdictional issues in forestry management. Perhaps that is an idea for further study for readers interested in the legal and historical aspects of forestry. I was also fascinated by Simard's note of a forest defender using generational trauma as a potential mitigating factor in sentencing and the complexity of protests to prevent logging old growth when some First Nations have an agreement to log their land to avoid loan default.

The last section of the book is Simard's defense of the term "mother tree" in her research. Whether or not peer reviewers decide "mother tree" belongs in scientific literature for objectivity reasons, the term conveys the familial, cooperative interactions between trees in a way that the general public may better understand. Further, it follows Simard's holistic approach to researching the forests and contrast that view to research that shows competition among species. After researching the debate to better understand this part of the book, I do not agree with the critique that this term implies Simard is anthropomorphizing the trees; instead I interpreted her use of "mother tree" as the descriptor of how trees are generational and work together clearly aligning with her research. Excluding "mother tree" would exclude critical insight on the issue when communicating with the public. Of course, now I need to read Simard's debut book, Finding the Mother Tree. I expect I will add both books to my shelves.

Thank you NetGalley and Knopf for the advanced copy. All opinions are my own.

[Fiona · Rating 4 out of 5]

Scientifically enlightening and emotionally engaging. Trees are amazing and we aren’t doing nearly enough to take care of them.

Thanks very much to Allen Lane for the free published copy for review.

[Dan Trefethen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Suzanne Simard is the pioneering scientist who discovered the extent of the underground fungus system that trees use to communicate with each other and share resources. This book extends her work from the Mother Tree Project to talk about how forests are degraded, how they operate, and what we can do to harvest wood and yet preserve the forests and prevent the release of huge amounts of carbon.

Simard and her assistants work with foresters to set up experimental plots with control groups, and with Indigenous people to understand how their ancestral methods anticipated the findings that Simard was proving scientifically.

The horrifying thing in this book is her finding that industrial logging with heavy equipment destroys the forest floor and releases more carbon than what's in the trees. In fact, they estimate most of the carbon stored in forests are in the floor and underground, not in the trees themselves. This means that more selective and gentler methods of harvesting can prevent huge releases of carbon.

The hopeful thing in this book is that Indigenous people are winning back their rights to manage their ancestral lands, piece by piece and through hard fought legal battles. Conservation groups are realizing the value of working with these people to advance common goals.

Simard has been criticized for anthropomorphizing her work, but her basic findings of interdependency and communication in the forest seem sound. There is a spiritual nature to her approach in the book that may lead some to discount her approach, but her scientific work is rigorous and peer reviewed. I would compare her to other scientists like physicists who are awed by the nature of things as they dive deeper into their scientific studies. A sense of awe and reverence is not necessarily a hindrance when encountering new truths about the interconnectedness of things.

[Patsey]

Lots of technical stuff that I skimmed over. I finished thinking that we are basically f*ked. I am increasing my donation to Forest Alliance today! And hugging all the huge trees in my yard 🌲

[Grace]

When the Forest Breathes by Suzanne Simard is one of those rare books that completely changes how you see the world around you.

In this blend of science and storytelling, Simard explores the hidden networks that connect forests, how trees communicate, share resources, and support one another through intricate underground systems. What could easily feel dense or overly technical instead reads as deeply human, grounding complex ecological concepts in real-world impact and lived experience.

What stood out most to me was just how interconnected everything is. This book makes it impossible to see forests as just collections of individual trees, they are communities, constantly communicating and adapting. That understanding makes the stakes of climate change feel even more urgent. The devastation of old-growth forests isn’t just environmental loss; it’s the unraveling of entire living systems.

At the same time, there’s something quietly hopeful in Simard’s work. Even in the face of destruction, there’s resilience woven into these ecosystems and a reminder of how much we still have to learn from them.

This was such an eye-opening and thought-provoking read, especially if you’re interested in nature, climate, or just want a book that will genuinely shift your perspective.

Thank you to Knopf for an Advanced Reader Copy of this book!

[Jamie Johnson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I feel like this book could’ve been so much more. It has a family’s title which had me intrigued, but the actual telling of information became blah at times. Partly due to the narrator’s lack of enthusiasm as she read, partly due to the author repeating themself quite a bit, and partly out of anger and frustration. The author having reached and obtained quite a bit of compelling evidence about how damaging the logging industry is on the environment just sort of accepted nothing was going to change from her data any time soon. The way it reads, there’s a sense of lackadaisical about the situation despite entire 1000 years old forests being killed in the name of affordability and greed. There goes earths lungs. No big deal.

However, there was a lot of really cool tidbits that I think would’ve been a better focus. For example, the yew tree produces a toxin used to treat certain cancers. Trees have their own way of speaking and communicating with one another. Forests remain strong and stay healthier when they grow around their families. All compelling information I want to know about way more than the unchecked murders of said forest families.

[Cec · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is the 2nd of her books I have given an honest effort in and failed. There are nuggets of good information but I just don't like her writing style. It meanders too often into the personal that is more than half a memoir and maybe 25% scientific and educational. She should really consider her titles.

[Kelsey Baguinat · Rating 4 out of 5]

You should read this if you're interested in: Nature, reciprocity in ecosystems, legacy and inheritance, climate adaptation and hope, biological memory, forest sentience

[Demetri · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Work of Inheritance
In “When the Forest Breathes,” Suzanne Simard writes of forests, mothers, and the fraught labor of continuation
By Demetris Papadimitropoulos | March 18, 2026


A fallen giant opens the canopy; light and burden pass downward together.

Most books about forests ask us to look up. Suzanne Simard keeps asking what happens after the giants fall.

That shift matters because “When the Forest Breathes” is not, finally, a book about trees behaving wisely while humans come panting after them with clipboards, guilt, and a management plan. It is a book about succession under pressure. Logging, wildfire, carbon, kinship, stewardship – all of that is here, often vividly, often persuasively. But the quieter book inside the louder one is about who carries life forward when the elders begin to go: the old trees, the mentors, the mothers, the dead. From its opening field plot in British Columbia, where Simard works among towering conifers with her daughters nearby, the book keeps returning to inheritance as ecological process, family drama, and moral burden. The question is not only how a forest regenerates. It is who keeps the system alive when the beings that once held it together are stripped out.

Neatness is not among its ambitions, and thank goodness. In form, “When the Forest Breathes” refuses to choose between field report, memoir, elegy, and argument, so it braids all four. Simard tells readers as much in the Author’s Note: this is not a scientific paper in trade dress, but an interpretive account of research, fieldwork, memory, ancestry, and one scientist’s way of seeing. That clarification matters because it tells you where her authority comes from. Not from floating above the landscape in the scrubbed prose of someone who has never had mud in a boot tread, but from knowledge earned in place, revised in place, and argued from inside the damage. The book wants to be read as situated witness rather than neutral dispatch. Most of the time, it earns that right.

The Mother Tree Project is the trunk everything else branches from. Simard and her collaborators establish experimental forests across British Columbia and test what happens when logged sites retain varying amounts and arrangements of old overstory instead of being flattened and replanted according to clearcut reflex. It is large, collaborative, expensive, muddy, and honorably unglamorous. She wants to know what those retained elders do for carbon, biodiversity, regeneration, mycorrhizal exchange, wildlife, and survival in a hotter, drier, more fire-prone future. Around that long study she winds her daughters’ growing lives, the mentorship and later death of her student Amanda Asay, her mother’s final years, old-growth blockades, cedar forests, village-site gardens, and the increasingly explicit argument that colonial forestry has confused extraction with stewardship for so long that it can barely recognize a living system unless it arrives in a spreadsheet and leaves as a stump.

Plot, though, is only the shell. The real force lies in where Simard teaches you to look. The forest is never scenic wallpaper. It is workplace, archive, graveyard, classroom, protest site, family system. She writes best when thought rises directly from touch: slash piles, soaked sleeves, conifer resin, fungal threads, smoke-thick air, seedlings in punishing heat, bark scarred by earlier fires, duff storing water and carbon. She likes species names, and thankfully so. Saskatoon berry, soopolallie, baldhip rose, woodmoss: that habit of naming keeps the prose from drifting into perfumed green fog. Even her larger claims about reciprocity and renewal usually arrive with some grit still on them. One of the book’s quieter pleasures is that it trusts the reader to care about exactness. A forest described only as “lush” is already halfway dead on the page.

Her sentences often move by accumulation – one clause, then another, then another – as if the syntax were trying to mimic forest floor and canopy in the same breath. Then she cuts the growth with a short sentence and lets it bite. The riskier wager comes at the level of diction. Silvicultural and ecological vocabulary shares the page with kinship language and ritual language: mycorrhizal fungi, carbon pools, xylem, mother trees, grandmother trees, blood, wisdom, life energy. In weaker hands, the blend would sound like two separate books trying to outtalk each other over bad coffee. Here it mostly works because Simard is making a hard argument about what counts as seeing. She is not prettifying science with intimacy. She is insisting that the language we permit ourselves shapes the relations we can recognize at all. When she is strongest, cadence and image do the persuading. When she is weaker, the sentence arrives already wearing its own halo.

Still, the prose is rarely inert. It has weather in it. It can move from explanatory science to sensory description to family memory without sounding as if it has changed channels. Simard knows how to let a line of thought gather pressure, and she knows when to puncture that pressure with plainness. The book is never embarrassed by feeling, which is not the same thing as being sentimental. Its anger, when it appears, is one of its best instruments – especially in scenes of forestry damage, in the old-growth chapters, and in those moments when systems language gives way to the bodies living, or dying, inside the system.

Its structure works because it thinks the same way the prose does – by return, pressure, and connection. The Mother Tree Project asks one version of the central question scientifically. The chapters on Indigenous stewardship ask it historically and morally. The chapters on Hannah, Nava, Amanda, and Simard’s mother ask it domestically and existentially. What sustains life? What happens when older beings are removed? What sort of intelligence lives in relation rather than isolation? The book keeps sending those questions through different terrain – greenhouse, cutblock, village site, blockade camp, hospital room, Amazon clearing – and each return usually adds pressure rather than padding. The best sections feel cross-pollinated. The weaker ones show their stitching. Even then, one senses a mind trying to make different orders of experience answer to one another rather than stack up politely in adjacent chapters like guests avoiding eye contact at a strained dinner party.

That ambition is also the source of the book’s finest achievement. “When the Forest Breathes” makes care look like a way of knowing. Plenty of environmental books put rigor in one jar and feeling in another, as if the reader must choose between a graph and a pulse. Simard refuses the split. The opening field plot with her daughters is not there to make the science cuddly. It establishes that attention is inherited. Amanda’s work on kin recognition is not merely a clever research lane. It becomes part of the larger claim that support and reciprocity are functions, not ornaments. Even Simard’s mother showing up at an old-growth protest under a sign reading “Old people for old growth” lands because it is funny, exact, and wholly in character. This book believes elderhood carries public duties, not just private poignancy. The old are not here to glow softly in the background while the future takes tasteful notes. They are structural. Remove them and the whole arrangement changes.

Amanda Asay’s death is where Simard earns the right to that belief. Amanda dies suddenly in a tree well while skiing, and the book does something crucial with the loss: it refuses to redeem it quickly. She does not reach for forest wisdom like a scented candle. She says the death feels “out of sync, out of cycle,” that it has “no conceivable meaning,” and she lets that stand. Here the book is under maximum strain, and here it is strongest. A weaker version would have pressed Amanda’s death into service as proof of some beautiful lesson about renewal. Simard does the opposite. She lets grief wreck the neat version of the argument first. Only later, and only partially, does she place Amanda’s legacy within a longer pattern of mentorship, community, and work someone else now has to carry. That sequence gives the book moral weight. If a philosophy of relation cannot survive senseless loss, it is just well-lit décor. Amanda matters here not because her death provides tragic ballast, but because it tests whether Simard’s organizing belief can withstand the one thing no theory metabolizes gracefully: the abrupt extinction of a singular person.

That seriousness saves “When the Forest Breathes” from becoming a climate lament with good bark detail. The broader relevance does not need to be bolted on because it is already in the weather of the book. Wildfire, old-growth logging, carbon loss, hydrological damage, plantation logic, colonial simplification – none of this feels tacked on for timeliness. Simard is writing from inside a forest crisis, not gesturing toward one from a ridge with a good view and a clean windbreaker. Her point is not simply that clearcutting is ugly, though she is very sharp on ugliness. It is that clearcutting is destructive at every scale: bad for stored carbon, bad for seedlings, bad for water, bad for habitat, bad for the older trees whose shade, seed, and system role cannot be replaced by nursery stock and a silvicultural pep talk. When she reaches village-site forest gardens and Indigenous stewardship systems, she sharpens the point further. The alternative to extraction is not a museum. It is use governed by memory, restraint, reciprocity, and time. That is a harder proposition than “save the trees,” and a much more interesting one. The book’s most durable political claim is not merely that forests need defending, but that many official definitions of management already assume the damage they claim to mitigate.

The old-growth blockade material matters for the same reason. It is not there merely because it is topical or combustible. It matters because it forces the book’s abstractions to stand in public. Here are the trees. Here are the roadblocks, the camps, the fatigue, the police, the stubbornness, the daughter watching, the mother refusing to disappear politely into retirement. Succession stops being a reading strategy and becomes a public argument about who is trained, by grief and by example, to stand where.

It will divide readers precisely where it is most itself. Simard’s quarrel with reductionist science is real, but she sometimes files it down too smooth. Industrial forestry gathers simplification, greed, and ruin; relational ecology and Indigenous stewardship gather complexity, reciprocity, and abundance. Much of that contrast is deserved, and often powerfully so. Even so, the moral sorting done in advance can look too neat. The book’s preferred words – relation, reciprocity, cycles, wisdom, stewardship – recur so often that some later passages feel less like discovery than like the same point in greener vestments. The strongest chapters dramatize tension. The weaker ones announce it. If you distrust metaphor in scientific prose, or bristle when a forest appears to teach rather than merely exist, you will find material here to resist. Simard knows this. In some ways the book is daring you to decide what counts as seriousness: the pose of detachment, or the risk of saying plainly that grief, politics, language, and ecology belong to the same damaged world.

The critique, though, should not come out tidier than the messy ambition it is measuring. “When the Forest Breathes” is not slack, vague, or coasting on virtue. Its overreach comes from pressure, not laziness. Simard is trying to hold together research, memoir, colonial history, Indigenous learning, activism, grief, and a defense of metaphor as a legitimate tool of perception. Sometimes she carries all of it gracefully. Sometimes you can hear the load shift. But the shifting is part of the record. The book is not pretending one can move through this material without strain. It is showing the strain. That matters, because the strain itself becomes evidence. A smoother book would almost certainly be a duller one, and likely a less honest one.

Nothing tests the book’s nerve quite like the late Amazon chapters. Some readers will lean in. Others will throw something soft. There are kapok grandfather and grandmother trees, visionary passages, and the sense of Simard asking whether she can still speak in the language of renewal after illness, backlash, wildfire, Amanda’s death, and her mother’s chosen ending. On paper, it should be too much. In practice, it is more earned than not. Not flawless. Not subtle in every paragraph. Earned. The point is not that the rainforest hands her mystical closure. It is that she is trying to decide whether she can keep going without shrinking into a woods prophet in field boots. The answer is yes, but not brightly. More like yes with ash in the lungs, grief in the pack, and no illusions left about what forests owe us. Those chapters do not resolve the book so much as enlarge it one last time: British Columbia’s forests become not just local sites of damage and memory, but part of a planetary argument about what sorts of relations endure and what sorts are burned out of the future.

This is part of the book’s oddness and part of its strength. It is not content to be a persuasive forestry book, a nature memoir, a grief book, an environmental argument, or a public account of science. It wants to be all of those, and sometimes several at once in the same paragraph. That ambition produces strain. It also produces range. At its best, “When the Forest Breathes” does not merely tell you that systems are connected. It makes connection feel like a problem of form, sentence, memory, kinship, and survival. That is much harder than saying trees talk to one another, and much more interesting than simply repeating that they do.

I’d place “When the Forest Breathes” at 88/100, or 4 stars on a Goodreads scale: clearly excellent, often beautiful, emotionally and intellectually ambitious, though not always as formally controlled as its best pages suggest it might have been.

When the smoke thins, one thought keeps standing. Simard’s hardest and most haunting insight is not merely that forests are connected. By now, that idea can arrive sounding almost domesticated. Her sharper point is that knowledge is a living system too. It depends on elders. It can be stripped out faster than it can be rebuilt. It survives only if somebody keeps carrying what the old giants, in their slow extravagant labor, were trying to pass along. Because that transfer never feels easy, the book stays under the skin. It is a book about forests, yes. More lastingly, it is a book about what remains in our hands after the giants fall and the canopy opens.


Underdrawing for the closing watercolor: structure before atmosphere, line before light.


Palette study for the finished watercolor, drawn from the book cover’s shadow blues, forest greens, and shafts of gold.

All watercolor illustrations by Demetris Papadimitropoulos.

[Robin S. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vital and human. 7,000 stars.

[Leeann Lavin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I come proclaiming good news. It is the First Day of Spring 🪻❇️🌸 and a perfect day to share my latest book review. Suzanne Simard, scientist, ecologist and the author of FInding the Mother Tree ~ which pioneered the concept of sophisticated communication between trees, now offers a powerful vision for saving our forests based on nature’s deep-rooted cycles of renewal.
Her new book, When the Forest Breathes Renewal and Resilience in the Natural World, celebrates its official publication date, March 31, 2026. I was given the opportunity earlier this year to read and review the book via an ARC (author’s review copy). I did so with reverence and great anticipation. I am just that geeky that I couldn’t wait to get back to the world as Simard translates it.

For those of you who are not yet converted and are perhaps curious and maybe teetering as a proselyte ~ or maybe you are totally uninitiated in the seismic change that Simard wrought, so allow me to set the stage and put the new book into context.

First, I think I have a way to visually tell some key elements of the story in a fun way. You are all probably familiar with the Academy-Award winning, box office hit Avatar ~ which went on to become the highest grossing film of all time. So you know of the importance of the Mother Tree to the story. A quick online search says it best:
Avatar mirrors scientific, real-world concepts of forest communication networks (sometimes called the "wood wide web") where trees share resources and information via underground fungal networks, a field championed by scientists like Suzanne Simard. In the film, these trees act as a neural network for the entire ecosystem.
When I first saw Avatar, I practically leapt up, or I did leap up ~ either way, I was moved so much to feel that, finally, at long last, I was seeing what I’d long felt was true but of course, didn’t have the vocabulary or scientific gravitas to articulate,
It was as if the ground literally shifted.

Then, Simard’s ahem, ground-breaking book, The Mother Tree took the world by storm. It was a revolution at the time it was published, and remains so. Her Ted Talk has earned about two and half million views. And counting.
Be sure to watch this “earh-shattering talk: (sorry, the nature and earth puns are irresistible.) You will be astounded.

https://youtu.be/Un2yBgIAxYs?si=kx2iD...

The Mother Tree book remains a best seller. It charts her years researching and proving what she knew was true but seemed unimaginable. Regrettably, it still does to some folks. Why this is so is a mystery to me. Why is it impossible to consider that trees and plants communicate and moreover care for their young?
Today’s technology allows Simard, her research team, and now others, to track and chart the plants’ ability to network and communicate; to document how mycelium connects different species.

One of Simar’s singular contributions is that she discovered and demonstrated that Douglas firs provide carbon to baby firs.🌲 She found that there was more carbon sent to baby firs that came from that specific mother tree, than random baby firs not related to that specific fir tree. It was also found that the mother trees change their root structure to make room for baby trees.

If you haven’t read the Mother Tree book, I heartily recommend it.
But even if you haven’t read it, don’t worry, my little overview is enough of an introduction 🙂for you to understand the context for her new, follow up book, When the Forest Breathes. And you needn’t worry about your ability to understand the research or the science. Simard writes about life, change, and love.
Plus, Simard provides more than enough background, launching into the work of forest communication by Simard and her team.
She gets right into the hard work and challenges of dealing with a skeptical logging industry in her native Canada. The loggers are at odds with her holistic approach to renewal and regeneration as practiced by the indigenous: the First People.
Why? Well, mainly because it takes time and money. And those are investments that the logging industry doesn’t see as part of its mission.
Plus, climate change is bearing down on the natural resources, accelerating the destruction of the future ecosystems.
She cites the fires of the Canadian forest and its impact on the rest of the continent. I can personally attest to the days that were as dark as night in New York City because of these fires…


In the book, Simard set up the insider’s look into the very real good guys and bad guys in this battle for the future of our environment and business that relies on nature. Loggers in particular are the villains and the government doesn't come out looking good vs. Simard, her team and the indigenous practices. Simard offers deep and respectful insight here that should be required reading for anyone who works as a public servant in environmental and interior policy.


With her notoriety, and general understanding of her brand of environmental stewardship there was more of a willingness for the Canadian government to implement her protocols. As readers, we come along as the team does their work to test her rigorous regeneration forest management.
The tug between the two sides is what makes the battle an interesting read.

The other interesting element in the book’s narrative is how Simard offers us parallel stories as she considers how the older Mother trees age, offering to the new-growth trees and baby trees nearby. She includes a memoir of her own family’s story.
In particular, there are very touching moments as she shares her obvious pride for her two daughters and her beloved PA~ who suddenly dies in a skiing accident. Simard writes of Nava, Amanda, and Hannah so that we experience the irresistible “siren call of duty” to the forests, and their commitment to take up the stewardship banner and continue the mission. As in a relay, team way.
We sense the magnetic pull of the trees and the environment; experience their triumphs and insights as they have matured to adults who now share her passion for their heritage and the forests. Then there is the impending grief and planning with her mother to determine her final days, choosing to die by way of Canada's Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) program. That her mother applies for eligibility makes it no less crushing. (By way of background, in order to be approved, citizens must be 18+ years old, eligible for Canadian health insurance, have a serious illness/disability, and endure intolerable suffering that cannot be alleviated.)
I can’t imagine it wasn’t just as heartbreaking to write about her mother’s final days as it was to experience it; but Simard delivers a tender, respectful account that makes this element of the book so enriching. As a Death Doula, I was sensitive to how Simard navigates this life experience.
In the book, she weaves her personal accounts into the grand, macro story that makes the memoir like a puzzle, where the pieces all fit together.

Simard’s inspiration as told in the book also combines and complements her work and learning from the indigenous people in Canadian NW and from a visit to the Amazon rain forests in Ecuador. Having spent several years in Ecuador myself, this passage is close to my heart. Simard visits the rainforest as a kind of healing retreat after the ravages of the two recent deaths. In Ecuador, she spends time with Kichwa of the Sarayaku community, seeking out and visiting a large Sagardo Uchuputo tree.

This trip is presented at the end of the book and her pilgrimage.
The book’s narrative reminds us that life ~ all life ~ is about cycles, rhythms; good guys and bad guys.

I am a card-carrying Simard groupie so it was a bit painful for me to consider that I wished the book was tighter, edited in a way that I didn't feel I’d read that already. I think that to the uninitiated or converts, it could be a wee bit of a slog.
If you ARE a convert, you didn’t want this book to end. The narrative tugs at your heart; the prose is brimming with tender sensory writing that transports you.
While there’s tension, the battle dynamics and the personal stories of life and death, it’s not a discovery or adventure in that usual way. But then, perhaps that is the very point. After all, trees and communities take time to mature. This is a reflection on the world as it is. Does it offer hope? Yes, but not the kind of happy ending with a bow tying everything up.
It’s a meditation on her personal family networks, including the forests and the environment, and the magical ability of nature to renew and rejuvenate. It’s a roadmap and a blueprint for all of us.

Thank you, Suzanne.

And thank you NetGalley and to the publishers: Knopf / Penguin Random House for the opportunity to review the book. All opinions are mine.

[Sharon Toner · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rather slow and boring.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

The forest teaches us to live in synchrony with the natural cycles, to stay in rhythm with the seasons, lifespans, and oscillations, the essential patterns that have evolved for success.

Nature is waiting for us to learn that we are all bound by the same rules. And to remember that, when the forest breathes out, we breathe in. When the forest thrives, we thrive. When the forest lives, we live.

Such an inspiring researcher that has changed the way the Western world looks at forests and this book continues her story, a mix of memoir and science that is great storytelling with a little of my favorite transcendence mixed in.

Nature is a rich fabric of endless cycles, from mushrooms and soil animals breaking down logs, to bacteria and fungi transforming organic sources and creating “dead” matter that is full of life, to aging trees “downloading” their genetic knowledge to their young. As young trees mature, they learn, adapt, and grow with their evolving circumstances and pass their wisdom to the next generations, ensuring the forest is enduring, regenerative, and resilient. Our own lives are inextricably bound by the same rules and destiny: birth, growth, death, decay, rebirth. Nature is waiting for us to listen. And to learn.

Sitting down in the shade, I picked up a fallen Douglas fir branch, the soft needles coated with a milky wax protecting them against water loss in this arid climate. I could use some of that, I thought. I pulled my cap lower over my sweaty brow. The glaucous sheath had turned the needles to sage green, the light wavelength reflected by chlorophyll. Chlorophyll is the compound—a pigmented protein—that makes photosynthesis possible. It’s composed of a brilliant assortment of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and magnesium molecules, in a structure similar to human blood. The magnesium in the chlorophyll reflects green light, just as the iron in hemoglobin makes blood run red. Chlorophyll captures sunlight, just as blood captures oxygen. I rubbed some needles on my flushed cheeks, inhaling the tart essence, and was immediately refreshed.

I reflected on the way trees and humans are intimately interdependent, breathing in and out each other’s essence in rhyme. The trees (the autotrophs, the producers) breathe in the carbon dioxide that we (the heterotrophs, the consumers) breathe out. In turn, trees breathe out pure oxygen that humans breathe in.

An hour later, Jean and I had finished measuring the last of the big trees in the plot. They ranged in age from 203 to 253 years old, all having established during a cool wet climatic period as far back as 1763, the year the Treaty of Paris was signed, when Canada became a colony of British rule. By the time the eldest tree had germinated, the Hudson’s Bay Company and Christian missionaries had been firmly established in the Indigenous territories of Turtle Island for over a century. Thick-barked and deep-rooted, these trees had been witness to the entire history of colonization, from the dispossession of the people from their land to the outlawing of Indigenous burning and the establishment of the residential school system that took their children. Now the trunks of these trees were tight-ringed, and the knots of fallen branches were hidden beneath the bark, but they still told the stories of this great change in human relationships with the land.

Might a tree’s neighbors—the species, density, or even the soil they grew in—affect how well Douglas fir relates to its own kin? This research built on her master’s discovery, where she’d found that Douglas fir distinguished between neighbors that were related—kin—and those that were strangers. Douglas fir seedlings growing in the presence of relatives were healthier and more vigorous and had greater mycorrhizal colonization, and seedlings received greater carbon subsidies to their mycorrhizal root tips from nearby kin than from strangers. These findings hinted that Douglas firs could enhance the growing conditions of relatives over outsiders, perhaps making “elbow room” by changing the competitiveness of their roots, or improving conditions in the soil to increase the chances kin neighbors would survive.

[Renato · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Every species in the forest community has a role to play, each making its own contribution to the perpetuation of the ecosystem, even, if perhaps especially, people. Humans have always been stewards of the forest, although not always good stewards.

Now we need to be protectors too."

Five resplendant stars!

When the Forest Breathes is a touching memoir that cover's Simard's life alongside her work that would eventually evolve into the the Mother Tree Project.

It is technical at some parts, but I think the personal storytelling keeps any reader (regardless of your scientific background) engaged enough to understand the importance of maintaining these Mother-Tree providers.

My main concern for this book is that the author anthropomorphizes the actions of individual trees & plant networks, using them as an analogy for the relationships within human communities. I was worried that this tone of explaining her science would leave her and her team's open to criticism.

Sure enough, Simard proves my concerns true, as this aspect of her studies is used against her to marginalize the conclusions of her research.

I would like to think that if she kept it strictly about the science (and less about flower power), then she would be better set up in converting logging companies and provincial governments over to her cause.

I took a lot of notes reading through this one, but I think a lot of this book surrounds around the three scientific points:
a) Flora communicates with flora via mycorrhizae, which are mutualisticaly symbiotic funghi that attach to plant roots, supporting nutrient uptake, soil formation and provide resistance to disease
b) There is evidence that older trees communicate and support other trees through this mycorrhizal network. These high-growth supporting trees are referred to as "Mother trees", and are very important for growth of all plant life in an area (although they often support related flora first)
c) Among the many beneficial things that trees do for us, one of them is the fixation of free carbon into woody biomass, as well as into the soil (as this biomass dies and becomes material for other organisms).

The idea of life supporting life is not new, even Darwin called it out:

"It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. "

What is new in Simard's book is that we are now able to define the mechanism of this codependance, and possibly harness it in ways that would allow the logging industry to not being so devestating to the lands that are being cleared out.

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superstar forest ecologist Suzanne Simard is back again after the ground-breaking success of her previous book, Finding the Mother Tree, which I highly recommend. Her research into tree networks, communication, kin recognition and support as well as the best ways to grow and harvest trees whilst preserving the delicate ecosystem is a balm against climate change. Though, sadly, her findings and actionable data seems to have fallen on deaf ears as loggers continue to clear cut old growth forests in British Columbia, and beyond, at pace. Not just clear cutting trees but destroying the soil and all life within the areas where they harvest. This is harrowing reading at times, though essential to know, but is hard to take. Do you recall the vast devastation in the film Ocean with David Attenborough? That's it in a nutshell but set within forests.

It is hard to believe that in this day and age people continue to turn their backs on nature. Humans, apex predators, have become mindless consumers of every possible resource on this planet but do not stop to think at what cost. The practice of clear cutting is fastest and cheapest so the option most often employed but the harm that ensues not only devastates the landscape and all life within their zone of control but releases carbon at a shocking rate.

It is easy to despair with the knowledge of our planet being ravaged to chase a buck but Suzanne gives us hope. She spends a lot of time with indigenous peoples around the world who have ancient wisdom on safeguarding the forests in their care. They take what they need with respect and give back to the natural cycle. Simple logic that is beautiful and awe inspiring. Why don't we live this way? In harmony with nature instead of fighting to control it.

This layman's research paper crossed with a memoir carries on from Finding the Mother Tree and is very approachable. Suzanne's story is an impressive one, gently kindling a flame of passion within the reader which mirrors her own. All is not yet lost but we must work to protect ancient woodlands EVERYWHERE, before it is too late.

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

If I had the money, I would send copies of this book to every elected official in this country. If I had the time, I would sit with each of them until they finished it. If I had the power, I would require every person who reads this book to gift it to someone else. It is that important, and that urgent. Suzanne Simard, author of Finding The Mother Tree, has continued her research and makes a compelling case for us to radically change the way we look at the natural world. When the Forest Breathes outlines Simard's research in British Columbia on the effects of clearcutting forests. She sums up her mission this way: "... to provide science-based alternatives to clear cutting, help develop harvesting practices that would protect and tend the forests instead of destroying them, and encourage community-based management so local people could collectively make decisions about forests that sustained their communities and their culture."

Doing this requires humans to understand that trees are living beings which are, in their own way, sentient. They communicate with each other, they live in community and they require each other to survive. And, they require other beings, particularly humans, to understand this because what they do affects them too. Part of this philosophy draws from Indigenous cultures and practices - she shares a meaningful ceremony where tribal leaders ask permission of the forest to enter.

One of the most moving features of this book is the way Simard weaves in memoirs of her daughters growing up and sitting with her mother at the end of her life. She links these life transitions to her work in a way that underscores her points even more. All of this demonstrates that she is not fatalistic, but optimistic that we are at a time in history where we can be part of an essential transformation.

I had not previously read her book or listened to her viral TED talk, but they are now at the top of my "must" list. Many thanks to Knopf and NetGalley for sharing this beautiful book. All opinions are my own.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

The older trees, with more resources, were connecting with and nurturing their younger siblings. from When the Forest Breathes

“The loss was irreplaceable.”

It is terrifying to read.

Clear cut logging in British Columbia’s forests not only denudes the land of their targeted trees, but the heavy equipment denudes the land of all the trees, all organic compounds, removing stored carbon entirely. Gone is the bacteria and fungi, the earthworms and small insects, the plants that contribute their organic matter to make soil.

The trees planted for the next harvest will not thrive in this environment. There is no farming of trees.

Profit drives this way of forestry. Short term profit.

Destroying the forests harms the entire Earth, driving climage change, allowing flooding and rampent wildfires. The carbon stored in forests is immense, and it’s release disastrous.

Humanity knows how to harvest trees sustainably. The Native Americans did it for generations. But there is no profit in it.

Suzanne Simard’s book When the Forest Breathes continues her research into the importance of Mother Trees and the impact of modern lumbering. It is a sobering book.

She also tells her story as a mother and a daughter. She tells of Native Americans who explain what the loss of the forests means to their way of life, and how their traditions preserved them. She finds hope in the Land Back movement that demands control over stolen lands.

We are facing a dystopian threat, but we are also gifted with the stunning opportunity to create transformational change. from When the Forest Breathes

The “power of colloboration” demonstrated by the trees of the forest show us the way forward. “When the forest breathes out, you breathe in. When the forests thrive, you thrive. When the forests live, you live.”

Thanks to Knopf for a free book.

[Bloss ♡ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Artfully blending memoir, research, and nature writing in a way that's both accessible and inspiring, this book is a glimmer of hope in the midst of climate breakdown.

I enjoyed spending time with Simard and her colleagues in their quest to change minds and broaden perspective using both Western science and Indigenous land stewardship practices. It was gut-wrenching to read about clear-cutting and unhinged lengths governments and corporations will go to in the name of profit. This heartbreak was compounded by the sheer volume of loss that Simard experienced while she was writing the book. Her love of Amanda shone through and I found myself emotional over Amanda's unexpected death. Mum's MAID journey too. Navigating the death of her land, her loved ones, and having dubiously-motivated actors calling her research into question must have been unbearable. Simard is a pillar of strength and I deeply respected her commitment to the forests and her work. She'll be proven right in the end.

While emotional and hard-hitting, Simard offers us a glimmer of hope in the epilogue. One that sees land stewardship returned to the tribes that have caretaken it for generations, one that might see a reversal of fortune for the forests. Ultimately, we can't heal in the environment that made us sick: the answers to how we steward planetary care will not be found in settler-colonialism and capitalism.

If you read Finding the Mother Tree, read this book.
If you haven't, read this book (Simard does a fantastic job at bringing readers up to speed).
Read this book to grieve, then galvanize. We've got a lot of work ahead of us, but Simard shows us that there's still hope.

My request to review this was approved by Allen Lane on NetGalley. 🌳

[Emma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Suzanne Simard previously introduced the world to the intelligence and interconnectedness of trees. Through her research, she has shown the world that these beings communicate, completely changing our understanding of nature.

In this, her second book, Simard turns now to renewal. Our forests are under threat worldwide, and especially in her homeland of Canada. Timber companies are clearing enormous swathes of trees for profit, leaving the forests at risk of fires and wildlife extinction.

Working alongside groups of First Nations people, Simard and her team discover incredible processes of regeneration, and how elder trees care for the saplings that grow from and around them.
The Native groups share their knowledge of the forests with her, and the pain and suffering the loss of these environments causes. They know how to farm the timber sustainably, but the wider world refuses to listen, for it is not profitable. This is the battle that Simard is fighting alongside her research.

She also tells us a more personal story, that of being a daughter and a mother, and she shares her personal journey with grief through the pages. In a parallel to the story of the forests, her own story also sees renewal, and it adds a beautiful depth to the otherwise scientific writing.

I highly recommend this, even if you haven't read Simard's first book. It is compelling, urgent and wonderfully written, and you will find yourself wanting to stand up and fight to save our trees.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for providing an eArc of this book.

[Kelsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Suzanne Simard is a pioneering forest scientist and a moving memoirist--a combination that has already garnered lots of public attention and, unfortunately, criticism from Western science which (despite being the baby in this conversation) continues to refuse other ways of knowing and existing. This follow-up to Finding the Mother Tree expands on the Project's research and methodology and introduces us to a new generation of forest scientists, experiments, and recommendations all in conversation with Indigenous land stewards and protectors.

For nearly a century, clearcutting has ravaged the world's forests and killed the forest floor that provides one of the largest carbon sinks on this planet. It is catastrophic, but Simard does provide a plan for a path forward out of the chaos we've wrought. Informative and terrifying, but also realist and hopeful. When you see the science laid out so clearly, it really is baffling that we've sacrificed (and continue to sacrifice) the Earth that we depend upon for everything so that a few people can make a temporary profit.

A spiritual companion to Robin Wall Kimmerer's The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World, and a fascinating read following Matt Kaplan's I Told You So: Scientists Who Were Ridiculed, Exiled, and Imprisoned for Being Right.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't like this as much as her first book. It had a similar writing style but less structure. The first book excelled at describing research colloquially, like "I wondered about this thing, so I planted some trees, and I found X, and I wrote about it." This book described what she wanted to know, with a lot of detail about setting up the experiment, and then it went on to something else - her visits to tribal lands, her student Eva's experiments, her mother's illness. I kept wondering when we were going to get the results of the clearcutting experiment. The results came about two-thirds of the way through the book and mostly showed that clearcutting was bad. I could've used more explanation of what was new about these findings. (I understood a bit about the carbon in the soil.) We never got the results of Eva's experiments, which makes sense as it isn't Suzanne's story to tell, but then why spend so much time on the setup? I liked her idea of connecting science to indigenous knowledge, and I could see how the various human deaths that occurred reflected the themes of cutting down trees, but it didn't feel well integrated.
Given to me for free by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I feel sad that I didn't like this more, as I like Suzanne and her work.

[Courtney Blair · Rating 5 out of 5]

First off, thank you NetGalley for a free copy of "When the Forest Breathes" by Suzanne Simard. I really enjoyed this book. It was engaging and informative. As someone who works at an environmental company (although in the cultural resource side of things), I could relate to the fieldwork and urgency of the mission. There was such a drastic contrast between hope and despair for the future of the world's forests. I love how Suzanne was able to spin both her wins and losses between her personal life and the Trees. Reminding us that we are all connected as one, and that death is an inevitable cost to life. It is how we chose to live, that fight to survive, and the knowledge of a good life lived at the brink of the end. That we are never alone. Our individual stories connect us throughout the ups and downs.

I really hope this mission succeeds. I look forward to reading her earlier book and any new books in the future. Definitely recommend this to anyone interested in the environment. Funny thing, since reading this book, the term "Mother Tree" keeps popping up as a gentle reminder of the universal connection.

[Melissa | honeybees_library · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you to Penguin Random House and Knopf for the free book.

When the Forest Breathes is a thoughtful exploration of the interconnectedness of nature and the resilience of forest ecosystems. The author’s expertise shines through as she explains how trees communicate, support one another, and adapt to environmental challenges, ideas that are both fascinating and eye-opening.

The book blends science with personal reflection, and I appreciated the way it highlights the complexity and intelligence of the natural world. There’s a quiet beauty in how it encourages readers to see forests not just as collections of trees, but as living, cooperative communities.

That said, while the subject matter is compelling, the pacing felt slow at times, and some sections leaned a bit too heavily into repetition. I found myself wishing for more variation to keep the momentum going.

Overall, this is an informative and reflective read that will appeal to those interested in nature, ecology, and environmental science. While it didn’t fully captivate me, it offered a deeper appreciation for the hidden life of forests and the resilience woven into the natural world.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a nonfiction book perfect for readers like me who overwhelmingly prefer fiction.
It reads like a story about a woman who is a brilliant and dedicated forest researcher , her family and coworkers. I loved how she wove in her life with her mother and her daughters.
It is so full of information about the great forests and coasts of the Pacific Northwest at the same time. I learned a tremendous amount of material.
There is even a quasi villain in the logging companies/ government.
I especially loved how she incorporated the ancient knowledge of the First People into her work.
The whole book was so inspiring and hopeful. The Mother Tree Project was totally amazing to me. Having done some research projects myself I found the depth and devotion of the team awesome! This research directly impacts climate change and the future of our planet and should be read by all elected officials and those involved in the logging industry
Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf Publishing for the ARC. This is a book I feel like crusading for everyone to read! .

[Austin Carter · Rating 4 out of 5]

First of all, Suzanne Simard is a hero. I love her work, philosophy, and dedication.
Where the mother tree book that precedes this was revolutionary and floored me, this book was sobering and unnerving. To put it simply, I am worried about mother Earth and the forest more after reading this and rather discouraged.
It seems like there are numerous parallels between Dr. Simard's personal life and the increasing slippage of the vitality of global ecosystems. To sum up, this book felt like a lament over numerous deep pains for Dr. Simard, where the only solution is to be resilient like an old mother tree.
I am in immense admiration of Dr. Simard for her tenacity and addressing the scientific criticism and cancellation of her work. I can't imagine that rollercoaster. I'm just glad she hasn't quit. Heaven forbid we anthropomorphize another species to better contextualize and relate to it.
Though the future looks bleak, I hope there are more people like her than I know.

[Tiffany · Rating 5 out of 5]

When The Forest Breathes: Renewal and Resilience in the Natural World by Suzanne Simard is a beautifully written, insightful, and inspiring memoir. This book is truly a breath of fresh air. A huge thank you to Knopf and NetGalley for the eARC of the book. The book is part memoir and part scientific ecology. The author seamlessly weaves her own personal story, indigenous wisdom, along with the science of how trees share resources and knowledge. It is a captivating, thought-provoking book that provides its readers with a great perspective on the emphasis that forests are living, breathing complex environments of regeneration. It is also a call to action for every human being to change how we perceive, treat, and align ourselves with the natural world around us. Climate change is affecting our planet, daily lives, and health, but we have the ability to respond and reverse its impact. When The Forest Breathes gives us so much hope, and shows us how we can do better.

[Connie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I looked forward to reading When the Forest Breathes: Renewal and Resilience in the Natural World by Suzanne Simard, and was delighted when my request for a Netgalley copy was approved.

Suzanne Simard ,does a beautiful job of weaving together her knowledge of trees in a book that is also filled with personal experiences. I love the details that added an extra layer to life in the forests that is such an important part of her life.

I also appreciate that she combined it with knowledge that local Indigenous communities, have had for a very, very long time; knowledge that has been passed down through generations, along with a concern for the trees that people out for profit don't care about. I feel I also had the opportunity to learn from Suzanne and those Indigenous people.

[Christopher Hynes · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’d happily read a 10,000 page book by Suzanne Simard. If you only want to read one of her books, I’d recommend her first book, “Finding the Mother Tree”, instead. It covers her early groundbreaking research up to about 2020, whereas this second book mostly focuses on new research since she wrote her first book.

Essentially reading for anyone that wants to understand the natural world and how western ways of viewing it are the root cause of climate change, as well as natural disasters such as flooding or forest fires. I think that her prescription is instead of trying to convince people to change their behaviour won’t work. You have to change entirely how they view the world, towards a way that most indigenous cultures around the world view the world.