Today, Sudowoodo are viewed as a sad little pokemon which wishes to be a tree, when they are remembered at all. Back when forests were not scattered wildlife preserves or homes for weak bug pokemon, but a fearsome symbol of nature's power, Sudowoodo, like Sawsbuck, were seen as a sort of forest spirit which protected the trees by concealing themselves like Voltorb or ninja within their midst. Whether building vast walls of rocks to fight forest fires or shooing away large flying-types such as Charizard who rip entire trees from the ground to eat them, Sudowoodo fought tirelessly to defend every tree they could save.
The Sudowoodo of this era gave the impression of tall trees, for Sudowoodo grow as slowly as trees do, and the small, shrub-like Sudowoodo so often seen by trainers are saplings compared to those which still stand, undetected, in many forests today. They are unable to offer meaningful resistance against the timber and paper industries, and content themselves by breaking chainsaws and axes with their body whenever an unfortunate logger mistakes them for a tree, then run away to blend back into the forest and damage more equipment another day.
Sudowoodo stone is itself a building material far more valuable than timber, one typically seen only in royal palaces and aristocratic estates. It is valuable not because of its rarity, but because the only way to harvest an old-growth Sudowoodo is to threaten its home with overwhelming force (typically a whole army) and promise to spare the forest at the cost of its own life. These promises are usually kept, for when they are not, the other Sudowoodo of the forest exact an enormous price for this betrayal, and the palace walls themselves often mysteriously cave in.