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Join us on Zoom Aug.11 from 6:30 to 8 p.m. for the 17th Annual Robert Bateman Lecture Series, featuring forest ecologist, Dr. Suzanne Simard.
Simard’s viral TED Talk on how trees talk with each other has over 10 million views worldwide and her work was recently the focus of a New York Times Magazine cover story. Her new book, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest asks us to reconsider the way we see and think about trees and how they live, communicate with each other, perceive one another, learn and adapt from one another, cooperate and evolve as a complex, intelligent, forest community.
Simard will share moving, deeply personal stories of ‘Finding the Mother Tree’, those potent, mysterious, grand-old forces that connect, nurture and sustain forests; stories that remind us of the vital and inseparable bonds that enable all life, and can show us a more symbiotic model of co-existence that prioritizes collaboration over competition. As we face global challenges and a climate emergency, these powerful teachings are essential to helping us bring both natural science and lived experience together to illuminate a more holistic view of life, provide a deep and beautiful way to learn more about the world we are part of.
A question and answer period will follow.
This event is part of the student experience in the Master of Arts in Environmental Education and Communication residency, so space is limited. With respect, no latecomers please.
This event is free. We encourage you to consider donating to the Robert and Birgit Bateman Bursary.
Join us on Zoom. Registraton is not required.
Dr. Suzanne Simard
Dr. Suzanne Simard was born in the Monashee Mountains of British Columbia and was educated at the University of British Columbia and Oregon State University. She is a professor of forest ecology in the University of British Columbia’s Faculty of Forestry. Simard is a pioneer on the frontier of plant communication and intelligence; she's been compared to Rachel Carson, hailed as a scientist who conveys complex, technical ideas in a way that is both dazzling and profound. Her work has influenced filmmakers (The Tree of Souls in James Cameron's Avatar) and her TED talks have been widely viewed and shared, the world over. Now, in her first book, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest, Simard brings us into her world, the intimate world of the trees, in which she brilliantly illuminates the fascinating and vital truths – that trees are not simply the source of timber or pulp, but are a complex, interdependent circle of life; that forests are social, cooperative creatures connected through underground networks by which trees communicate their vitality and vulnerabilities with communal lives not that different from our own.