But Wohlleben doesn’t stop at the attempt to draw the attention of laypeople to the subject of forests. “The Hidden Life of Trees” made it to the top of German bestseller lists and author Wohlleben has been portrayed in reputable newspapers even before the English version of the book was released in early September. While the fact that trees “talk” to each other through spreading electrical signals across fungal networks may surprise neither biologists nor keen forestry students, the phenomena described in the book have caught the enthusiasm of a broad audience of readers. By drawing from findings in research and his own experience working in forests, Wohlleben uses human analogies, such as friendship and the acts of sharing and caring, to break down complex interactions in forest ecosystems. If we came so far in the 21 st century as to credit animals with complex emotional lives and passed laws that extend rights to them and if the decades long struggle of environmental movements has helped to unleash a broader move towards organic farming practices, can we also shift our perspective on trees to pave the way for more sensitive forms of forest management? In his bestseller “The Hidden Life of Trees” German forester Peter Wohlleben gets to the bottom of this idea by offering an alternative view on trees as social beings.
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