Trees in Trouble

Wildfires, Infestations, and Climate Change

By: Daniel Mathews

Narrated by: Jamie Hanes

Climate change manifests in many ways across America, but few as dramatic as the attacks on our western pine forests. In Trees in Trouble, Daniel Mathews tells the urgent story of this loss, accompanying burn crews and forest ecologists as they study the myriad risk factors and refine techniques for saving this important, limited resource.

Mathews transports listeners from the exquisitely aromatic haze of ponderosa and Jeffrey pine groves to the fantastic gnarls and whorls of 5,000-year-old bristlecone pines, from genetic-test nurseries where white-pine seedlings are deliberately infected with their mortal enemy to the hottest mega-fire sites and neighborhoods leveled by fire tornadoes or ember blizzards.

Scrupulously researched, Trees in Trouble not only explores the devastating ripple effects of climate change, but also introduces us to the people devoting their lives to saving our forests. Mathews also offers hope: a new approach to managing western pine forests is underway. Trees in Trouble explores how we might succeed in sustaining our forests through the challenging transition to a new environment.

©2020 Daniel Mathews (P)2020 Dreamscape Media, LLC

Trees in the west

If you want to learn about trees in the west (of North America), this is the book.

I haven’t found any other book which details the threats and changing conditions for western forests so thoroughly and with so much detail. From bark beetle mortality, to fires and megafires, exotic pathogens, to the story of forests as they were managed by the indigenous peoples, mismanaged by the state in the 1900s, and how we’re working to solve these issues right as climate change is changing the whole game board underneath us.

Forests are my own field of study, and yet this book still taught me a lot. Highly recommended!