Peter Wohlleben is a German forester and author who writes on ecological themes in popular language. After graduation from forestry school in Rottenburg am Neckar, he took up a job as a government wood ranger in the Rhineland-Palatinate in 1987. As he grew more familiar with the woodlands he was overseeing, he became disenchanted due to the damage caused by the techniques and technologies he was expected to employ, including the felling of mature trees and the use of insecticides. In his 2015 book about natural forests, Das geheime Leben der Bäume:Was sie fühlen, wie sie kommunizieren - die Entdeckung einer verborgenen Welt, he takes the perspective of the trees, much as Jacques Cousteau took the perspective of the inhabitants of the oceans. Among other phenomena, this book introduces for a popular audience the "Wood-Wide Web", through which nutrition and signals are exchanged among trees. In 2016 he published his book Das Seelenleben der Tiere which was translated into English and published under the title The Inner Life of Animals: Love, Grief, and Compassion — Surprising Observations of a Hidden World in 2017. His 2012 book Kranichflug und Blumenuhr, was translated as The Weather Detective: Rediscovering Nature's Secret Signs in 2018. His newest book The Secret Wisdom of Nature: Trees, Animals, and the Extraordinary Balance of All Living Things – Stories from Science and Observation was released in 2019. Professionally, Wohlleben manages a beech forest on behalf of the municipality of Hümmel, Germany. He has offered regular tours of local forests; in 2017 one is programmed for August based on The Hidden Life of Trees.
Wohlleben began publishing books about his views on ecology and forest management in 2007. The appearance of his Das geheime Leben der Bäume through Random House's Ludwig imprint led to profiles and reviews in all the major German newspapers, including skeptical pieces in the businesspress. The book was featured in a cover story in Der Spiegel and appeared on the Spiegel bestseller list. An English translation was published in September 2016 under the title with a foreword by Tim Flannery, published in partnership with the David Suzuki Institute. Translations into other languages are in progress. The New York Times ran a profile of Wohlleben in January, 2016. The article describes him as a forester who devotes his professional efforts to preserving the forest rather than managing it for lumber production. "For us what’s important is what will happen in the next 100 years or next decade. Not even all that plastic in the ocean will destroy nature—it will sink into the sediment eventually—but in the next decade ocean fish with micro-plastics in them that can cause cancer will be an important issue for us," Wohlleben told Maclean's under the heading "The best way to save nature? Do nothing." The documentary filmIntelligent Trees features several of Wohlleben's observations. It portrays him alongside Suzanne Simard, a professor of forest ecology at the University of British Columbia, whose research supports most of Wohlleben's observations about communication among trees.
