This ultimately comes down to another case of “not the story we wanted to tell,” but why didn’t the Night Elves use nature portals instead of arcane ones during their evacuation of Teldrassil?
This portal is not just a means of bringing back Cenarius through the dream. Think about it, <name>. Once a gateway through the Emerald Dream is open, our forces can use them to move freely from Moonglade, Nordrassil, and even Wyrmrest, to this strategic location.
Jarod says: Cenarius! Excellent! With the portal active, we can move our forces to the frontlines unfettered.
Given Teldrassil’s connection to the Dream we saw in Stormrage, one would think that portals into the Dreamway should have already been available there.
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Well since the Teldrassil connection was mentioned in a book, I’m going to take a wild guess and say none of the devs remembered anything about it.
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I reckon that depends on where the portal in Teldrassil exactly is.
Wouldn’t of helped if it was further into the fires.
Evacuations with portals were going long before the fires started.
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If you need a story explanation, maybe most of the druids were sent to Silithus, or were fighting the Horde. Not enough experienced Druids that can open a gateway. That or they wanted to go to Stormwind, so they planned for it.
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Maybe they probably thought they had plenty of time?
They had the mages avalible to that’s what they were working with.
A like Arlifrex said, they probably didn’t have as many druids. I mean, not sure what the ratio is, but it’s probably a good bet that most of the Population are untrained commoners.
And the Mages might of been sidelined and still in Teldrassil because they weren’t trusted on the Battlefield? 
Malfurion deployed the Mages to the battlefield right away, as he wrote in a missive in Elegy:
I have sent a message to General Feathermoon, the archdruid had written. The fleet, bearing the general’s soldiers, is to return immediately. I have authorized magi to assist you as well, and will be making my own way to Ashenvale shortly.
Have courage, Commander Summermoon. You are not alone.
Elune will be with us.
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Ok. Maybe they were Trainees? Magi Students studying there?
I don’t know. You asked, I’m throwing out ideas.
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Oddly, the biggest center we’ve seen for training new Night Elf Mages was already down in Feralas at the Tower of Estulan.
The fleets heading for Feralas were intercepted by Malfurion’s messenger while they were still sailing down. Any forces that had already been in Feralas might not have actually gotten word about the War of the Thorns until it was already over.