Lauren E. Oakes with Pooja Sarin Tandon and Lowell Wyse

shows how the path from climate change to a habitable future winds through the world’s forests.

In recent years, planting a tree has become a catchall to represent “doing something good for the planet.” Many companies commit to planting a tree with every purchase. But who plants those trees and where? Will they flourish and offer the benefits that people expect? Can all the individual efforts around the world help remedy the ever-looming climate crisis?

In Treekeepers, Lauren E. Oakes takes us on a poetic and practical journey from the Scottish Highlands to the Panamanian jungle to meet the scientists, innovators, and local citizens who each offer part of the answer. Their work isn’t just about planting lots of trees, but also about understanding what it takes to grow or regrow a forest and to protect what remains. Throughout, Oakes shows the complex roles of forests in the fight against climate change, and of the people who are giving trees a chance with hope for our mutual survival.

Timely, meticulously reported, and ultimately optimistic, Treekeepers teaches us how to live with a sense of urgency in our warming world, to find beauty in the present for ourselves and our children, and to take action big or small.

Lauren E. Oakes is conservation scientist and writer. She has held various appointments at Stanford University over many years as a researcher, lecturer, and adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Earth System Science. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Scientific American, Emergence Magazine, Nautilus, and other media outlets. Her first book, In Search of the Canary Tree (Basic Books, 2018), won second place for the 2019 Rachel Carson Environment Book Award and was a finalist for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Communication Award. The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation supported research and reporting for Treekeepers, her new book about the global reforestation movement. Lauren lives in a little forested canyon outside Bozeman, Montana with her husband and two children.

Pooja Sarin Tandon is a general pediatrician and researcher at the Seattle Children’s Research Institute, associate professor at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine, and Director of Health at the Trust for Public Land. She has published widely on the importance of physical activity, outdoor time, and nature contact for health. She recently co-authored the book Digging into Nature: Outdoor Adventures for Happier and Healthier Kids. She lives in the Seattle area with her husband and two children.

An English professor turned urban forest advocate, Lowell Wyse became the Executive Director of Tacoma Tree Foundation in 2021. For over a decade, he taught college writing, literature, and environmental humanities, focusing on the many ways that social and environmental issues overlap. He is deeply motivated by the values of community, justice, stewardship, resilience, storytelling, and placemaking. Lowell lives and works in downtown Tacoma (Puyallup territory) and volunteers on the Sustainable Tacoma Commission.

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Event Venue & Nearby Stays

The Elliott Bay Book Company, 1521 10th Avenue, Seattle, United States