Combining personal experience with concrete fact, A.K. Hellum's Listening to Trees tells the story of a man's lifelong journey to salvage today's declining forests. In this enlightening account of Hellum's half-century career as a forester, we become privy to our environment's fragile state-of-being through the manipulation of forests that have been stripped of their resources and improperly regenerated over the span of a lifetime.

As Hellum guides us on his journeys through the forests of Thailand, China, Guyana, and the Philippines, we emerge with a new understanding of how the smallest elements of the world's ecosystem can have a significant and devastating impact on the environment at large. While reinforcing Stan Rowe's life's work as an environmentalist, Listening to Trees serves as a staunch reminder of the fragility of modern forests while providing a glimpse into the soul of an environmentalist pleading for his beloved timberland.

Dr. Andreas Kåre Hellum studied forestry at the University of British Columbia and completed a PhD at the University of Michigan. He went on to teach silviculture at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, where he is now a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Forest Sciences. A father of three, he currently lives with his wife in Edmonton and works as a translator of Norwegian, his native language.

Hellum is one of few Westerners to have visited the nation of Bhutan, which is located between India and China. While there, Hellum organized a Bhutanese foundation for forestry research, in addition to painting the local flora. His previous title, A Painter's Year in the Forests of Bhutan is the result of his research and original artwork from Bhutan, which portray several species of flora never seen by North Americans.

Hellum has also written a series of handbooks on how to identify selected tree seedlings native to Bhutan, Guyana, Thailand, and Malaysia, and cites examples of what further work is necessary if reliance on indigenous tree species is to be pursued in reforestation.

Andreas (.A.K.). Hellum's profile page