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![A Trillion Trees: Restoring Our Forests by Trusting in Nature by [Fred Pearce]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51Oz+1DzVnL._SY346_.jpg)
A Trillion Trees: Restoring Our Forests by Trusting in Nature Kindle Edition
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“A vivid, important, and inspiring book.”— Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Sixth Extinction and Under a White Sky
“Eloquently mulls the ecological dynamics of forests as well as the social, economic, cultural, and political forces that determine their fate.”—LA REVIEW OF BOOKS
A powerful book about the decline and recovery of the world’s forests––with a provocative argument for their survival.
In A Trillion Trees, veteran environmental journalist Fred Pearce takes readers on a whirlwind journey through some of the most spectacular forests around the world. Along the way, he charts the extraordinary pace of forest destruction, and explores why some are beginning to recover.
With vivid, observant reporting, Pearce transports readers to the remote cloud forests of Ecuador, the remains of a forest civilization in Nigeria, a mystifying mountain peak in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, and the boreal forests of western Canada and the United States, where devastating wildfires are linked to suppressing the natural fire cycles of forests and the maintenance practices of Indigenous peoples.
Throughout the book, Pearce interviews the people who traditionally live in forests. He speaks to Indigenous peoples in western Canada and the United States who are fighting to control their traditional forested lands and manage them according to their traditional practices. He visits and speaks with Nepalese hill dwellers, Kenyan farmers, and West African sawyers who show him that forests are as much human landscapes as they are natural paradises. The lives of humans are now imprinted in forest ecology.
At the heart of Pearce’s investigationis a provocative argument: planting more trees isn’t the answer to declining forests. If given room and left to their own devices, forests and the people who live in them will fight back to restore their own domain.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherGreystone Books
- Publication dateApril 26, 2022
- File size9202 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"Though Pearce tempers his optimism with hard science, his enthusiasm is infectious...An exhilarating and informative look at the world’s forests and how we can help them thrive."—Kirkus
“Few topics could be more urgent than the fate of the world's forests. A Trillion Trees is a vivid, important, and inspiring book.”
—Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Sixth Extinction and Under a White Sky
“Stirring and surprising … leaps from country to country, from case study to case study, in a manner reminiscent of Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction. ...If you care about the future of the planet, you have to read this book.”
—The Times (UK)
“[Pearce] eloquently mulls the ecological dynamics of forests as well as the social, economic, cultural, and political forces that determine their fate.”
—LA Review of Books
“A journey to discover that every life on this planet is connected to our remaining trees, and that the people living among them may know best about how to fight for their future.”
—Lauren E. Oakes, author of In Search of the Canary Tree
“We should all read Fred's book. He tells us in a practical and most readable way, how we can bring back the forests of the Earth and restore our planet to health. Never think that we can plant a forest ecosystem. The mega mix of species has to come together by itself. That is the best and easiest way to save ourselves and perhaps Gaia.”
—James Lovelock, author of The Vanishing Face of Gaia and Novacene
“That most commonplace thing, a tree, is now our best hope for maintaining a habitable planet. This book explains in accessible, urgent prose the many wondrous workings of trees in making rain, wind, oxygen and habitats for much of life on earth as well as a vision for how we can, and must, reforest the world. Essential reading for the twenty-first century.”
—Ben Rawlence, author of City of Thorns
“An important and eloquent contribution from one of our very best science journalists. Forests have always transfixed the human imagination, and you will be transfixed by Pearce’s stories of travels around the world to forests in over forty countries. And his conclusions may surprise you.”
—James Gustave Speth, former dean, Yale School of the Environment, and author of America the Possible: Manifesto for a New Economy
Praise for The New Wild
Named one of the best books of 2015 by the Economist
“[Pearce] hits the nail on the head… [He] brings the balanced perspective of a seasoned, freethinking environmental reporter, pushing points that need to be made.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Pearce shows that biodiversity actually increases more frequently than it decreases when newer wildlife marches in. Must reading for environmentalists of every stripe, and an optimistic report on the resilience of nature in a world of constantly shifting ecosystems.”
—Booklist
Praise for The Land Grabbers
“Raises complex and urgent issues.”
—Booklist, STARRED review
“Compelling and well-researched ... Dissects the modern rush to acquire land for production, investment, speculation or preservation.”
—Nature
“A thorough and enlightening exposé.”
—Conservation
“A well-researched, informative and accessible look at important economic and agricultural issues.”
—Kirkus Review
About the Author
Fred Pearce is a freelance author and journalist based in the UK who has reported from over sixty countries. He is an environmental consultant for the New Scientist, a contributing writer for publications including the Guardian, Washington Post, and Yale Environment 360,and the author of numerous books, including The Land Grabbers and When the Rivers Run Dry.
--This text refers to the hardcover edition.Product details
- ASIN : B09NF63ZN9
- Publisher : Greystone Books (April 26, 2022)
- Publication date : April 26, 2022
- Language : English
- File size : 9202 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Not Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 337 pages
- Page numbers source ISBN : 1771649402
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,357,044 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #216 in Botany of Trees
- #963 in Environmental Science (Kindle Store)
- #1,162 in Trees in Biological Sciences
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Fred Pearce, author of The New Wild, is an award-winning author and journalist based in London. He has reported on environmental, science, and development issues from eighty-five countries over the past twenty years. Environment consultant at New Scientist since 1992, he also writes regularly for the Guardian newspaper and Yale University’s prestigious e360 website. Pearce was voted UK Environment Journalist of the Year in 2001 and CGIAR agricultural research journalist of the year in 2002, and he won a lifetime achievement award from the Association of British Science Writers in 2011. His many books include With Speed and Violence, Confessions of an Eco-Sinner, The Coming Population Crash, and The Land Grabbers.
Photo Copyright Photographer Name: Fred Pearce, 2012.
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The subtitle of my review refers to a literary tic the author has of repeatedly trying to contextualize geographic areas by comparing them to US states or small countries. I don’t know about you, but the relative sizes of Rhode Island, Switzerland and Tennessee are not immediately accessible to my imagination. As these arbitrary comparisons popped up in chapter after chapter, however, I found they transformed from tediously opaque to charmingly quirky. Like the subject, this ideas in this book will take root and inspire you if you give them a chance. It’s not just an ecologic manifesto, but an example of how careful journalism can reveal unexpected truth and wonder.
In the first part of the book, Pearce writes about the many ways trees make life possible. I think nearly everyone knows about photosynthesis. Trees are the world’s lungs breathing in carbon dioxide and breathing out oxygen. That’s cool, but trees do so much more. For example, they alter the temperature of the surrounding area. They also form “flying rivers” bring rain to the interior. They make the planet livable. And they are in trouble.
In the second part, Pearce breaks readers’ hearts by recounting so many ways trees are being over-harvested and destroyed. He reviews the history of harvesting and the many uses trees serve in business.
In the third part, he talks about government efforts to reforest, to save the trees by planting more. Tree-planting is popular with many companies offering to plant a tree if you buy x, y, or z. Reading the book raised my awareness of the many corporate programs that plant trees. But it turns out not all tree planting is the same and really, trees know better than we do what needs to happen.
While there may be a U.N. plan to plant a trillion trees, but Pearce argues that we will make more progress if we listened to the people living where the trees are and trust trees to rewild themselves more effectively that the more typical tree plantations that get planted.
This book made me feel a rare bit of environmental optimism. Glaciers are melting, sea levels are rising, and we have increasingly extreme weather, but trees are making a comeback. Pearce makes a good argument for stricter limits on tree-cutting and tree-planting that listens to indigenous people among the trees and to the trees themselves.
I only have one quibble, but it’s a big one. The book felt repetitious, saying the same thing again and again. It is optimistic. The most interesting part was the first, learning how wonderful trees and miraculous trees are. It got boring at times, mostly because I felt he was driving the point home again and again.
I received an ARC of A Trillion Trees from the publisher through Shelf Awareness
A Trillion Trees at Greystone Books
Fred Pearce at Yale School of the Environment and at The Guardian
Nevertheless, I found the book intriguing, and informative beyond what many are aware of. That in showing how much we need the forests, the tipping points we are reaching in our relentless destructive drive, the missteps in reforestation together with the misdirection of aspects of current conservation "wisdom", and why we should let Nature restore our decimated forests and biodiversity, as opposed to business as usual. What do you think got us into and is exacerbating this mess?
I found this enlightening book both saddening and hopeful, and I believe it is essential reading for everyone in these times.
"Forests long ago made our planet's atmosphere, environment and life-support systems. And they still do it. We mess with their life-support systems at our peril."
My hat is off to those like this author that are trying to expand our understanding of the overriding environmental dilemma we face, especially with so many, consciously or unconsciously, choosing nescience.
Last year I read Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer and while reading A Trillion Trees I kept thinking Ms. Kimmerer needs to read this book if she hasn't already. Mr. Pearce dives into the importance of indigenous communities in healing and protecting Nature. Though it's not as poetic as Braiding Sweetgrass, it gets very close. When Fred Pearce is describing the "flying rivers", I could almost see them with that sense of wonder about it all.
I appreciate how this book is a thorough mix of scientific and personal experiences. It was also a beautiful blend of being realistic regarding the sense of the loss we're experiencing when it comes to trees and nature and being hopeful when it comes to how they can make a comeback if we give them a chance. Thank you Mr. Pearce and all who contributed to the creation of this book!