This is scientific Americans 60 Second Science. I'm Steve Mursky.

Well, lots of people recognize that as humans get older, they tend to have less and less children.

Trees do it the other way round.

David Lindenmeyer, he studies conservation, landscape ecology, and biodiversity

at the Australian National University College of Science in Canberra.

On January 26th, he spoke to Scientific American Editor and Chief Marriott-D Christina when they were both

at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

What happens is that the older, some of these really big old trees get,

the more seeds they produce and the more germinous

they're likely to have.

So it's actually polar opposite of what we see with humans

and most other animals. So really quite extraordinary. And how about the number of

older trees that we have today? How is that look? Oh that's It's quite a distressing situation because in many

many forests and woodland and other ecosystems around the world, populations of large old trees

are declining very, very quickly. And this matters because a lot of biodiversity, a lot of carbon, a lot of key

ecosystem processes associated with those really big old trees.

Is there something we can do about this?

Absolutely there is. We can make about this? Absolutely there is.

We can make sure that we grow more forest.

We can make sure we protect the big trees that we have now.

And we can make sure that we don't do things that really put a lot of pressure on those trees straight out just cutting them

down we should not be cutting down really big old trees anymore.

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