Standing amongst these old giants releases our sense of importance and gives us a peace of being. They have been through and survived so much for so many years. And we know well, that from fire resilience to water services to carbon sequestration to extraordinary biodiversity, these forests far outperform the very young forests we typically manage for.

We have very little old or even “mature” forest in this country. Why?

Some would say, it’s simple: money. Those big old trees have a lot of board feet in them, and it takes too long to grow them back. The time value of money is just too great.

Others might say it’s the way we’ve always done it. Our mills are all adjusted to small, young, uniform trees. Our subsidies are all geared to reforestation and using various wood residues. The common sense wisdom is that it just makes financial sense to manage for young plantations.

Young, homogenous, vulnerable tree plantations dominate our landscapes. But, given the enormous, irreplaceable values of older and old forests, especially for climate, the great challenge facing us is how to manage for old forests.

Michael Taylor’s work documenting the remaining great old giants shows us the extraordinary value of even a single big, old tree on the landscape. They provide a road map of what to manage towards.

The next step is aligning our polices to encourage and engage forest managers in managing to restore and maintain these old forest functions. Given the amazing capacity of older forests to mitigate the climate crisis, our future depends on it.