Something stripped the bark off my young tree — what should I do?

Bark shredded and hanging in vertical strips on a small-diameter trunk, typically somewhere between knee and chest height, on one or two sides. The wound looks scraped and fibrous rather than cut or chewed. Small side branches snapped off around the damage. Almost always a young smooth-barked tree from an inch to a few inches thick. Loose bark on the ground at the base. Rodent damage looks different — visible tooth grooves, usually right at ground level or below the old snow line. The living layer that carries sugar down to the roots sits directly under the bark, so bark loss on a young tree is not cosmetic. If the damage runs most of the way around, the roots are cut off from their food supply and the tree dies from the bottom up over the following season or two — often after leafing out normally once first. If the stripped area is on one side only, the tree walls it off and grows around it, and the lasting consequence is a permanent weak point in the trunk rather than a death sentence.