What if, instead of competing with each other, trees work together? What if they even communicate? Renowned forest ecologist Suzanne Simard has spent her life digging into the "wood wide web"—the mycorrhizal network of fungi and roots through w

Bonus Ep: Wildfire

Jan 28th, 2021 43m 47s

In 2020, wildfires swept across the West, consuming millions of acres of forest and destroying thousands of homes and even whole communities. And sadly, this is just the beginning. Fire is the future here in the West. But what we often forget i

Guest Ep: How to Save a Planet

Jan 22nd, 2021 1h

In the final months of the Trump administration, there were a flurry of environmental rollbacks that hearkened back to the Timber Wars, including changes that would make it easier to log old trees and a huge reduction in the area protected for

Guest Ep: Grouse

Nov 21st, 2020 19m 2s

If you’ve been enjoying Timber Wars, there’s a new show you should check out. It’s about a weird and wonderful bird: the greater sage-grouse. You’ll find these creatures in wide open sagebrush country, trying to hang on alongside oil and gas dr

Bonus Ep: Big Money Bought the Forest

Nov 14th, 2020 35m 33s

In 'Timber Wars,' we've talked about how the northern spotted owl took the blame for a lot of other things that cost jobs and hurt timber-dependent towns, like automation and international competition. Well, there was another huge thing the owl

Ep 7: A Way Forward

Oct 3rd, 2020 38m 30s

Is the Northwest fatally divided, or can we overcome our differences and work together? We tell the story of one group of loggers and environmentalists who have found some semblance of common ground. But it didn’t come easy. And no one knows ho

Ep 6: The Backlash

Sep 22nd, 2020 33m 18s

Before the Northwest Forest Plan had a chance to succeed, Congress seized upon the threat of wildfires to create a loophole and throw the plan out the window. With old growth once again being logged, the fight to defend it grew both more mainst

Ep 5: The Plan

Sep 21st, 2020 38m 9s

The Timber Wars grew so hot that one of President Clinton’s first acts in office was to fly half his cabinet to Portland to resolve the conflict. The result was the Northwest Forest Plan, the most sweeping conservation plan in U.S. history. But

Ep 4: Mill City

Sep 21st, 2020 33m 7s

Mill City was one of dozens of flourishing timber towns, where a job in the woods or at the local sawmill could support a good life. But protests and court cases upended that, leaving locals to ask: are owls more endangered than loggers?

Ep 3: The Owl

Sep 21st, 2020 33m 14s

Throughout the 80s, environmentalists lost in the woods and in the courtrooms. There just weren’t many laws that protected trees. But there were laws that protected animals. And the idea started to percolate: what if they could protect the old

Ep 2: The Ancient Forest

Sep 21st, 2020 32m 40s

For most of America’s history, trees were seen as crops, and the plan was to log the country’s last virgin forests and make them de facto tree farms. We see forests very differently today. How did things change so quickly?

Ep 1: The Last Stand

Sep 21st, 2020 30m 41s

When loggers headed into the forest on Easter Sunday in 1989, they found a line of protesters blocking the road. The ensuing battle would help catapult old-growth forests into a national issue, and become known as the “Easter Massacre.”

Trailer

Timber Wars Trailer

Aug 28th, 2020 1m 54s

It’s the 1990s in the Pacific Northwest. A march of chainsaws clear-cuts the country’s last available ancient forests. Protesters bury themselves in front of bulldozers and spend months sitting in the tallest trees in the world. And at the cent

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