The ranger told us that old-growth forests are ODD, meaning old, dead and down. We were walking through the Hoh Rainforest, one of the last remaining temperate rainforests in the United States, shortly after we’d moved to the Pacific Northwest. It sure looked odd compared to the forests I was used to in Ontario. The first thing we noticed was the moss; dense curtains of the stuff hanging from branches and blanketing trunks. The trees were larger too, massive, towering Douglas Firs, Western Red Cedars and Sitka Spruce, but spaced farther apart than the trees of Eastern forests. And then there was the tremendous amount of dead and downed wood, a junkyard of logs and branches, lying higgledy-piggledy all over the forest floor.

Since then we’ve visited old-growth forests in Northern California, Washington and on Vancouver Island. But it’s only in the last couple of years that I’ve understood how rare, important and threatened these forests are. And from books like Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard, I’ve also learned about the beautiful, complex, even miraculous interdependence between these forests and salmon, the other iconic wildlife of the Pacific Northwest.

So I eagerly snapped up a copy of The Trees Are Speaking: Dispatches from the Salmon Forests by Lynda V. Mapes just after it came out. It’s a wonderful book.

Lynda Mapes is a journalist and author based in Seattle. She writes about the environment and Indigenous issues for the Seattle Times. The Trees Are Speaking is her seventh book.

The Trees Are Speaking:
Dispatches from the Salmon Forests
By Lynda V. Mapes
University of Washington Press, Seattle, 2025

The Trees Are Speaking is about the old-growth salmon forests of Oregon, Washington, Vancouver Island and Maine and about the scientists, Indigenous leaders and even loggers trying save them. Mapes looks at these forests from different scales, starting with the lifecycle of individual trees, then expanding out to the functioning of healthy forests followed by entire ecosystems and finally to planetary threats and challenges. She examines them from environmental, economic and cultural perspectives. Her writing is beautiful, even a bit lyrical at times. Mapes clearly loves these forests and if you read this book you’ll understand why.

In the opening chapter, Mapes presents an intimate portrait of the life and death of individual trees. She climbs up into the canopy of a 200-foot tall, 400-year-old Douglas Fir, a tree that grew from a seed “no bigger than the point of a pencil.”

“I thought about this tree’s four hundred years, and of all it had seen and endured. Ice storms, wind, searing sun, lashing rain. But also the soft touch of bird feet, the silken glide of a flying squirrel, the first light of each dawn.”  [p. 14]

And when these venerable giants finally die and fall back to the ground, they’re just beginning a second life that supports even more life, more biodiversity, than when they were standing.

“Living, dead, these words don’t really make sense in an old-growth forest of the Pacific Northwest, where a live tree is mostly dead but for the growing live layer of cells under its bark called the cambium. And what does dead mean for a decomposing log that holds even more living beings than this tree did when it was alive?” [p. 5]

I love the term “salmon forest.” It evokes such a wonderful yet surprising relationship. Mapes describes it in detail. Salmon hatch in the freshwater creeks and streams that lace through the forests. As they mature, the fish swim down the rivers and out to sea where they spend most of their lives and gain about 99% of their body weight. When it’s time to spawn they return to their natal streams, breed, lay eggs and die. Their bodies nourish the trees. Bears and wolves pull them out of the river and eat the fattiest parts. Birds, rodents and insects feast on the rest. The carcasses decompose into the soil bringing nutrients to the trees. Scientists have found ocean-sourced nitrogen in the rings of old-growth trees.

“Salmon are the silvery shuttle that interweave the region, with their migration from interior rivers through the estuaries to the ocean and all the way back again, bringing gifts from the sea to the rivers and the land.” [p. 67]

But the trees also support the salmon. Their roots stabilize the riverbanks and their overhanging branches shade the water, keeping it cool. Insects drop from the trees into the water becoming food for young smolts. And when dead logs fall into the rivers, they create channels, pools and riffles where salmon can rest, feed and breed.

“In the same way that a live and dead tree are really just a continuum of the same being, the forest and its streams and the beings in them are one interrelated organism and force of life. It is this complexity and interrelatedness that makes these dynamics inseparable, and the wealth of each dependent on each other. [p. 64]

Before the arrival of European settlers, Indigenous peoples lived in and managed these forests sustainably for thousands of years. Europeans took only a few hundred years to decimate them, first on the east coast and then on the west. Mapes lays out the history of horrific destruction, commodification and financialization of the forests. It’s grim reading in part because consumer demand – our demand – has been a driving force.

Still, it’s not all bad news. Many remaining old-growth forests are protected areas in the US and Canada. Initiatives like Salmon Parks on Nootka Island in British Columbia are attempting to restore entire watersheds. Dams have been removed from the Penobscot, Elwha and Klamath rivers. Locally owned, family-run timber companies practice more selective and sustainable cutting. And there’s increasing appreciation of Indigenous approaches to forest management among scientists and government officials. One of the main messages of The Trees Are Speaking is that all forests can and should be managed for environmental, economic, and cultural values simultaneously.

If it were only a question of improving forestry and conservation practices, we might be on a path to healing and restoring these precious forest ecosystems. But as Mapes shows us, even protected forests cannot be protected from the intense fires and invasive insects and fungi caused by global climate change. This threat, this destruction is overpowering the efforts of scientists, local communities and Indigenous peoples.

If there’s any hope at all, it lies in the resilience of the forests, of nature itself. Throughout the book, Mapes shows examples of forests and rivers recovering, faster than we might expect, when people stop destructive practices or abandon logged-out areas or undam rivers. The question is can we do these things fast enough, at large enough scale to make a difference?

Unsolicited Feedback

I loved The Trees Are Speaking. Like Finding the Mother Tree, this book is mainly about connections. Lynda Mapes writes eloquently about the deep and beautiful connections between firs and salmon, soil and ocean, people and land, that sustain old-growth forests. Those connections sustain us too. From the food we eat, to the lumber we use to build our homes, to the paper we write on, we depend on forests. We depend on them now, more than ever, to store carbon, support biodiversity, clean our air and water. It’s doubtful we can survive without healthy forests. The Trees Are Speaking shows why it’s so important to save them. Highly recommended.

Thanks for reading.

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Related Links

Emma Marris. “The Salmon That Surprised Everyone.” New York Times, 29 Nov. 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/29/opinion/salmon-california-oregon-nature-resilience.html?searchResultPosition=1.
(Report on the surprisingly fast recovery of salmon in Oregon’s Klamath River following dam removal.)

Franklin, Jerry F.; Cromack, Kermit Jr.; Denison, William; McKee, Arthur; Maser, Chris; Sedell, James; Swanson, Fred; Juday, Glen. 1981. Ecological characteristics of old-growth Douglas-fir forests. Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW-GTR-118. Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Forest and Range Experiment Station. 48 p. https://research.fs.usda.gov/treesearch/5546. (Seminal research revealing the key structural characteristics of old-growth Douglas. fir forests: large live trees, large snags, large logs on land, and large logs in streams.)

Quinn, Thomas P. 2018. The behavior and ecology of Pacific Salmon and Trout. University of Washington Press, Seattle, WA. https://uwapress.uw.edu/book/9780295743332/the-behavior-and-ecology-of-pacific-salmon-and-trout/. (See especially Chapter 7, The Ecology of Dead Salmon.)

Cederholm, C. J., D. H. Johnson, R. E. Bilby, L.G. Dominguez, A. M. Garrett, W. H. Graeber, E. L. Greda, M. D. Kunze, B.G. Marcot, J. F. Palmisano, R. W. Plotnikoff, W. G. Pearcy, C. A. Simenstad, and P. C. Trotter. 2000. Pacific Salmon and Wildlife – Ecological Contexts, Relationships, and Implications for Management. Special Edition Technical Report, Prepared for D. H. Johnson and T. A. O’Neil (Managing directors), Wildlife-Habitat Relationships in Oregon and Washington. Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Olympia, Washington. https://wdfw.wa.gov/sites/default/files/publications/00063/wdfw00063.pdf. (Report from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife on managing salmon not just for human consumption but for promoting ecosystem health.)