Book Review: The Treeline by Ben Rawlence

The Treeline: The Last Forest and the Future of Life on Earth

The Treeline: The Last Forest and the Future of Life on Earth
By Ben Rawlence • St. Martin’s Press • 2022
Winner of the 2023 New York Public Library, Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism

Review by Bill Knudson

Ben Rawlence, a British writer and journalist, has researched and compiled a fascinating look at the seven major trees in six ecosystems of the northernmost forest, the treeline forest. He describes the trees, the people and the changes that are occurring due to global warming.

Scotland, Norway (Finnmark Plateau), Siberia, Alaska, Canada (Boreal) and Greenland are described, including the major tree species that dominate within each region. Many of us overlook the importance of these areas. The forests that are most often recognized as essential for Earth’s future ecological balance are those in the vicinity of the equator—while those forests are important, the trees at higher latitudes are equally valuable and necessary to sustain some sense of balance in our ecosystem. The Boreal Forest and Arctic Treeline south of the Arctic Circle make up the largest stand of trees remaining in the world.

The prologue states: “More than the Amazon Rain Forest, the boreal is truly the lung of the world. Covering one fifth of the globe, and containing one third of all the trees on earth, the boreal is the second largest biome, or living system, after the ocean” (pp. 6–7).

This is a book about climate change. The Scot pine that graced the hills of Scotland, the first tree discussed in the book, is no longer a forest—only a few trees or small clusters remain. Rawlence describes the trees as being on the move in the other regions. The changes are occurring rapidly and the permafrost thawing will speed the process.

The trees, the landscape, the people and their cultures that make up this book are splendidly described, chock full of information on a beguiling landscape. The politics, lack of research and possible effects of our behaviors are cause for alarm. We as citizens of this world are not sounding much of a forewarning and the voices of the few that do speak are unheeded.

The changes are complex. In portions of the treeline, as in Scotland, forest deforestation has occurred. In Norway the forest is expanding (afforestation). Parts of the forest are burning and not regrowing. The permafrost is melting, a causation that will dwarf all of the aforementioned actions. This description runs true for the entire Arctic Circle—an extremely intricate, delicate, symbiotic system that has evolved over thousands of years is collapsing. Reindeer and Caribou are being affected as is the lifestyle of the various peoples that live near the Arctic Circle.

Poplar River First Nation peoples in Manitoba, Canada have created a UNESCO site on 12,000 square miles to protect at least a portion of the forest and the balsam poplar which is the main tree in the reserve. Although this won’t stop the trend, it will allow the community to follow a belief in their culture, at least for a time.

One of the members advised his daughter about her college education, saying, “Unless you know who you are and where you came from, that knowledge will be useless” (p. 193). The author’s host told him when he visited the site, “If the land gets sick we get sick” (p. 191).

This place is called Pimachiowin Aki (The Land that Gives Life), and the people who live there believe that the trees, the rock, the water, and the other animals are life-giving—as necessary as oxygen is to our breath. “One seventh of Canada’s boreal has been clear-cut since 1990, a shocking proportion going as pulp for toilet paper. We are actually wiping our behinds with the last remaining trees that stand between life and death for humans on planet earth” (p. 190).

The author ends the book with this finely crafted paragraph: “We must prepare our children for uncertainty but not as victims. We and they are stewards, still charged with an ancient responsibility. The earth is alive and enchanted, and to act within it is to enchant the living—to see, hear, feel, dance—to create the future with every step in full recognition of the fact that every move you make, however large or small, matters” (p. 268).

Bill Knudson is the Treasurer of the Badlands Conservation Alliance Board of Directors.