Finding the Mother Tree: A Conversation with Suzanne Simard
Did you know below the forest floor is an underground world of fungal networks that allow trees to communicate and act as a single being?
Join us for a webinar with TED Speaker and UBC Professor Suzanne Simard to celebrate the launch of her new book, Finding the Mother Tree (which you can now purchase here). The book is a moving account of Dr. Simard’s scientific quest to discover the tree elders that nurture forests in ways that remind us of human families—by caring for each other, sharing food, and sheltering their young.
Watch the Q&A with Dr. Simard and enjoy a beautiful reading from Finding the Mother Tree. You will also hear from Kwakwaka’wakw artist Rande Cook and SCBC’s Robin Strong and Flossie Baker, who will update you on the current old-growth movement in B.C.
Scroll down to watch the webinar recording and explore resources from the session!
Check out these resources from the webinar!
- Check out our new portal for ideas of how you can use your talents in the old-growth movement! You can join our network of action takers at InviteToAction.ca
- Buy Suzanne’s book Finding the Mother Tree.
- Call on the B.C. government to protect intact old-growth forests now.
- Learn to draw Mother Trees with artist Julius Csotonyi and Suzanne Simard!
- Learn more about Mother Trees with this educational packet for youth that provides both scientific and Indigenous perspectives.
- Learn more about Rande’s work and the Tree of Life campaign.
- Read the study that Robin mentioned, Conflicting portrayals of remaining old-growth: the British Columbia case
- Please consider making a donation today to help protect the last remaining old-growth forests in B.C.
About the author
TED Speaker and UBC Professor Suzanne Simard has earned a reputation for pioneering research on tree connectivity and communication. Her research brilliantly illuminates that forests are social, cooperative creatures with communal lives not that different from our own.
Dr. Simmard is a Professor of Forest Ecology at the University of British Columbia, where she currently leads The Mother Tree Project and co-directs the Belowground Ecosystem Group. Her work has been published widely, with over 170 scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals, including Nature, Ecology, and Global Biology, and she has co-authored the book Climate Change and Variability. Her research has been communicated broadly through three TED Talks, TED Experiences, as well as articles and interviews in The New Yorker, National Geographic, The Globe and Mail, NPR, CNN, CBC, and many more. She lives with her two adventurous daughters and their wild and crazy extended family in the mountains around Nelson, British Columbia. You can purchase her recently released book, Finding the Mother Tree, here.
Photo by Mya Van Woudenberg/Sierra Club BC