Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. In a quiet corner of northern New York state, the white pines of the...

Edward Faison, an ecologist at the Highstead Foundation, stood quietly in a patch of forest that stretched for miles in all directions. Above him, the needles from white pine trees swayed — common in ...

Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. In a quiet corner of northern New York state, the white pines of the...

This article develops a philosophical and ecological argument for proforestation, understood as allowing existing forests to grow into their full ecological complexity, as a response to the climate emergency. It critiques the dominant human-centred framing in proforestation and forest–climate debates, in which forests appear primarily as carbon sinks, assets, or nature-based solutions deployed to stabilize the climate for human benefit. Drawing on ecological research, the paper shows how proforestation supports rich habitats for trees, animals, fungi, bacteria, pollinators, and insects, emphasizing the importance of old-growth structures, deadwood, soil microbiomes, and mycorrhizal networks.

“Proforestation” describes the process of allowing existing forests to continue growing without human interference as they achieve their full ecological potential for carbon sequestration and biodiversity. Old forests sequester a higher amount of carbon than younger ones, with large, old...

Edward Faison, an ecologist, stood quietly in a patch of forest that stretched for miles in all directions. Above him, the needles from white pine trees swayed — common in the Adirondack Forest Preser...

Edward Faison, an ecologist at the Highstead Foundation, stood quietly in a patch of forest that stretched for miles in all directions. Above him, the needles from white pine trees swayed — common in ...

Ed. Note: Previously published by Biodiversity for a Livable Climate at: Proforestation Beyond the Human: Forests, Climate Emergency, and the Undoing of Mastery – Biodiversity for a Livable Climate. Abstract: This article develops a philosophical and ecological argument for proforestation, understood as allowing existing forests to grow into their full ecological complexity, as a response to the climate emergency. It critiques the dominant human-centred framing in proforestation and forest–climate debates, in which forests appear primarily as carbon sinks, assets, or nature-based solutions deployed to stabilize the climate for human benefit. Drawing on ecological research, the paper shows how proforestation supports rich habitats for trees, animals, fungi, bacteria, pollinators, and insects, emphasizing the importance of old-growth structures, deadwood, soil microbiomes, and mycorrhizal networks. At the same time, it engages Indigenous and relational philosophies and critical environmental thought to argue that forests must be recognized as more-than-human communities with their own temporalities and claims to existence. Proforestation, in this view, is not merely a technical mitigation strategy but part of a broader ethical and political reorientation: decentering human mastery, acknowledging historical injustices and Indigenous land rights, and embracing slower, longer timescales of responsibility. The article concludes that proforestation can either reinforce the...

In the end, proforestation offers us a choice about who we wish to become. We can continue to treat forests as instruments to repair a damaged atmosphere, pulling them into our orbit as another tool in a human-centred project. Or we can accept their invitation to live differently: to slow down, to restrain ourselves, to share space and time with other beings whose existence does not revolve around us.

Edward Faison, an ecologist, stood quietly in a patch of forest that stretched for miles in all directions. Above him, the needles from white pine trees swayed — common in the Adirondack Forest Preser...

Edward Faison, an ecologist, stood quietly in a patch of forest that stretched for miles in all directions. Above him, the needles from white pine trees swayed — common in the Adirondack Forest Preser...

Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. In a quiet corner of northern New York state, the white pines of the...

Edward Faison, an ecologist, stood quietly in a patch of forest that stretched for miles in all directions. Above him, the needles from white pine trees swayed — common in the Adirondack Forest Preser...

Real Art Ways to screen proforestation documentary at Connecticut Science Center Real Art Ways will launch its "Science on Screen" series Saturday, April 25, with a screening of the documentary "Profo...

Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. In a quiet corner of northern New York state, the white pines of the...

Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. In a quiet corner of northern New York state, the white pines of the...

Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. In a quiet corner of northern New York state, the white pines of the...