![]() When Peter was tasked with managing a forest, he did it in a truly environmentally friendly way - even though he didn’t have permission to work that way. The forest was exactly as it should be, he says. ![]() ![]() After 30 years of travels, he visited a virgin forest in Europe, a beech forest in Romania. He found forests that were managed in a more environmentally friendly way, and he began talking to scientists. Peter began to travel around in search of alternatives. “As a trained forester, I thought, ‘Yeah, that’s how it has to be,’” he recalls. Foresters are taught that younger forests are better and more productive. ![]() Lay people instinctively know that it is not OK, he says, while foresters were trained to believe that felling old trees is important for the environment. He says it’s fascinating to see a tree falling down, but also noisy and sad. One of Peter’s first jobs as a forester was to fell old beech trees. He points to the Amazon rainforest, which thrives with no human intervention. ![]() But he rejected the idea that forest management is necessary. Peter realized that many German forestry students and even politicians believe that if foresters do not thin trees with chainsaws and then re-plant, a forest will die. Forester and author Peter Wohlleben authored “The Hidden Life of Trees” and, more recently, “The Heartbeat of Trees.” (Courtesy of Paul Wohlleben) ![]()
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