Online Environmental Forum - Click Here
- Back to Main Page
The following are some famous environmental quotes centered on the theme of foresty. If you would like to go to the online environmental forum Click Here.
“You hear headlines from time to time about the Amazon [rainforest] disappearing at a greater or lesser rate.... The real story is that over time the rate has stayed just the same. Year after year, decade after decade, we have failed to stop—or really even decrease—deforestation.”
- Patrick Symmes
“Your attention must be directed to the preservation of the forests, not as an end in itself, but as the means of preserving and increasing the prosperity of the nation.”
- Theodore Roosevelt
“Trees are the best monuments that a man can erect to his own memory. They speak his praises without flattery, and they are blessings to children yet unborn.”
- Lord Orrery
“The first Europeans settlers did not step off boats into a vast, primeval forest untouched by human hands. Millions of Indians were living in these forests then, and more than half their food supply came from cultivated fields kept free of trees by repeated burning. There is no scientific evidence to support the largely romantic notion that eastern forests were somehow formed independent of human influences. The fact is they were shaped and reshaped by human and natural forces.”
- Dr. Edward Buckner
“Most factors associated with old growth can be provided through management. Large live trees, snags and downed wood can be provided in even-aged stands after harvest – including clearcutting – by retaining live trees and snags…Because vertebrates have diverse lifestyles, the worst possible approach to maintaining vertebrate diversity would be to manage every acre the same. Some species do best in stands in which all or most trees have been removed. Others do best in stands that are older. Some may require both, and many species are generalists that do well in stands spanning a wide range of ages or structures. Thus, stand age alone is a poor indicator of habitat for vertebrates.”
- Fred Bunnell
“Conservationists need to consider a broader range of land management options. There is currently a significant bias favoring old-growth related research. It is undermining our more complete understanding of how the pieces of nature fit together. For every old-growth research project, there should be companion research involving young and middle-aged forests. Biological diversity is the sum of all ecological processes, not just those we can observe in old-growth forests. [The bias favoring old growth research] has spawned largely cosmetic terms like “ecosystem” and “biological diversity,” which serve to promote the idea that ecosystem management is only possible on a very large scale. This isn’t true. I want to promote the idea it is possible to increase the ecological content of almost any tract of land, regardless of its size or management regime. There is a positive role here for everyone, from the backyard gardener to the largest industrial forest landowner.”
- Dr. Robert Buckman
“A seed hidden in the heart of an apple is an orchard invisible.”
- Welsh Proverb
“Waiting for nature poses a greater risk of large-scale ecosystem destruction than the risks associated with small-scale human intervention. Our region’s forests have a history of frequent, violent, large-scale disturbance. If we walk away and leave these forests to nature, we run the risk of losing the very ecosystems we are trying to preserve. Moreover, we have no assurance that forest set asides will actually grow older. There is a greater probability they will burn up or blow down first.”
- Dr. Chadwick Oliver
“They kill good trees to put out bad newspapers.”
- James G. Watt
“Though a tree grows so high, the falling leaves return to the root.”
- Malay Proverb
“The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
“It is ridiculous for private forest landowners to be so defensive about their management practices. From an ecological point of view, forestry mimics natural processes. On large ownerships, it is possible to manage forests in ways that produce almost as much diversity as is found in wilderness areas. Disturbance is the key. It is what drives the cycle of life, death and rebirth in forests.”
- Dr. Rainer Brock
“A nation that consumes more than it produces is exporting its environmental impacts to other nations that provide what is consumed. It is like shipping your garbage to another town that needs the money and is willing to put up with the stench. Most of the raw materials consumed by the industrialized world - including the United States - come from impoverished countries that lack the money, technology and political will needed to regulate their own extractive industries. In the emerging global economy, nations should be increasing, not decreasing, their dependency on wood fiber because wood is renewable, recyclable, biodegradable and far more energy efficient in its manufacture and use than are products made from steel, aluminum, plastic or concrete. Furthermore, growing forests and the lumber they provide store large amounts of carbon dioxide that would otherwise escape into the atmosphere, adding to the potential for global warming.”
- Dr. James Bowyer
“Around a flowering tree, one finds many insects.”
- Guinea Proverb
“We aren’t removing enough trees to meaningfully alter wildfire behavior. We may say we’re improving forests, helping the economy and protecting homes but in many instances we aren’t. I understand the need to accommodate as many differing points of view as possible, but limiting the scale of restoration and the size of trees that can be removed does little for forests or the economy. Many people believe Southwest forest suffer from an overabundance of little trees, but the fact is that we have too many trees of every size except the very largest. If we want more big trees in our forests, and if we want to significantly reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire, we have to thin the whole forest, not just the smallest trees.”
- Hiram Smith
“People who think doing nothing in forests is the best way to provide habitat for old growth dependent wildlife species may be fooling themselves. Forestry provides the only means for predicting and controlling the outcome. Forestry is a tool for imposing equilibrium in an otherwise chaotic natural world. By controlling the limits of natural disturbance, we produce outcomes society wants: timber, wildlife habitat, clean water and beautiful forests. Nature is indifferent to society’s needs. Forestry tries to fill needs.”
- Dr. David Loftis
“People in suburbia see trees differently than foresters do. They cherish every one. It is useless to speak of the probability that a certain tree will die when the tree is in someone's backyard. You are talking about a personal asset, a friend, a monument, not about board feet of lumber.”
- Roger Swain
“Tropical rain forests, as well as tropical and temperate dry forests, are being destroyed rapidly. At present rates, some critical forest types will be gone in a few years and most of the tropical rain forest will be gone before the end of the next century. With them will go large numbers of plant and animal species.”
- 'Warning to Humanity', under the heading 'Forests', the statement signed by 1600 senior scientists from 70 countries including 102 Nobel Prize laureates on November 18, 1992.
“A garden without trees scarcely deserves to be called a garden.”
- Henry Ellacombe
“After almost a century of intentionally excluding fire from Intermountain forests, wildfire is again gaining the upper hand. To regain control, we need to treat overstocked dead and dying timber stands that are fueling these fires. Thinning and controlled use of fire are the tools needed to restore natural processes that were present in forests that were here before we excluded fire. If we as a society decide not to use these tools, catastrophic fires will destroy the very forests we all love and are trying to save.”
- Dr. Steve Arno
“Removing human influences – by imposing a harvest ban in National Forests – would have horrendous impacts on native forests and species. Many early and mid-succession plant and animal communities would be lost, creating very unnatural landscapes, a significant decline in biological diversity and a significant increase in the size of wildfires, resulting in further losses to native forests.”
- Dr. Tom Bonnicksen
“The forest is a peculiar organism of unlimited kindness and benevolence that makes no demands for its sustenance and extends generously the products of its live activity; it offers protection to all beings offering shade even to those who destroy it.”
- Buddha
“In the next 24 hours, deforestation will release as much CO2 into the atmosphere as 8 million people flying from London to New York. Stopping the loggers is the fastest and cheapest solution to climate change.”
- Daniel Howden
“Forests precede civilizations and deserts follow them”
- François-René de Chateaubriand
“Not even the wildest forest can serve the habitat needs of all creatures. As forests evolve through time, they provide habitat for different groups of species. As the structure of the forest changes, species move on or die out. That’s nature.”
- Dr. Allan Houston
“If civilization has risen from the Stone Age, it can rise again from the Wastepaper Age.”
- Jacques Barzun
“Ladies and gentlemen, the world's forests need to be seen for what they are—giant global utilities, providing essential public services to humanity on a vast scale. They store carbon, which is lost to the atmosphere when they burn, increasing global warming. The life they support cleans the atmosphere of pollutants and feeds it with moisture. They act as a natural thermostat, helping to regulate our climate and sustain the lives of 1.4 billion of the poorest people on this Earth. And they do these things to a degree that is all but impossible to imagine.”
- Prince Charles
“A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people."
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt
“You don’t have to return to pre-settlement forests to see the likely result of a ban on harvesting. The years 1992, 1993, 1994 and 1996 were big fire years in the Intermountain west. They provide very visible evidence of what happens when forests are neglected: severe fires in ponderosa pine forests that historically had lower intensity burns, major losses of fish and wildlife habitat and degradation of air and water quality. [Minus some form of management in the forests we will witness more] large damaging firs, a futile fire fighting effort costing hundreds of millions of dollars and possibly taking firefighter lives, and massive insect and disease infestations."
- Dr. Steve Arno
“I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech-tree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines.”
- Henry David Thoreau
“The world’s forests need to be seen for what they are.. giant global utilities, providing essential services to humanity on a vast scale. Rainforests store carbon, which is lost to the atmosphere when they burn, increasing global warming. The life they support cleans the atmosphere of pollutants and feeds it with moisture. They help regulate our climate and sustain the lives of some of the poorest people on this Earth.”
- Prince Charles
“Letting nature take its course in these forests implies a willingness to accept the consequences of catastrophic fire. I am unwilling to accept the ecological consequences of huge, unnatural fires. We can’t restore the forests that were here 150 years ago, but we can restore the natural processes that created them, and that is what we are trying to do in our research work.”
- Dr. Steve Arno
“Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does.”
- George Bernard Shaw
“Some people believe America’s ancient forests were ordered, self-regulating and stable features of the landscape. Contrary to this myth, the species that made up an ancient forest came together only for a short time before becoming extinct or moving on when conditions changed. The shifting, sorting, extinction and evolution of species constantly created new forests with different assemblages of plants and animals. Nature’s clearcuts (fires, windstorms, diseases and insect infestations) played an important role in producing the chaos and ceaseless change that characterized the ancient forests.”
- Dr. Tom Bonnicksen
“God is the experience of looking at a tree and saying, 'Ah!'”
- Joseph Campbell
“I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.”
- Willa Cather
“In wildness is preservation of the world.”
- Henry David Thoreau
“National forests are unhealthy because they have the wrong kind of trees and too many of them. The cause is a combination of past timber harvesting practices and fire suppression. The cure involves (a) removal of some of the trees to alleviate stress by reducing competition for limited moisture and nutrients and (b) management practices favoring tree species best suited to individual sites. Public policy and public trust are two closely related barriers standing in the way of an effective cure.”
- Dr. Jay O’Laughlin
“Trees give peace to the souls of men.”
- Nora Waln
“Wilderness is an anchor to windward in the seas of increasingly frightening environmental change.”
- Roderick Nash
“A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.”
- Greek Proverb
“God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools.”
- John Muir
“The problem with leaving forest “to nature,” as many seem to want to do, is that we can’t control the outcome. We get what nature serves up, which can be pretty devastating at times. But with forestry we have options, and predictability not found in nature.”
- Dr. Alan Houston
“I sincerely believe that there's room for cutting down trees for forestry and grazing, so as we all get to eat. Everyone has to compromise.”
- Steve Irwin
“Forests are the 'lungs' of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people.”
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
“Oak trees come out of acorns, no matter how unlikely that seems. An acorn is just a tree's way back into the ground. For another try. Another trip through. One life for another.”
- Shirley Ann Grau
“The next day, we visited Mt. St. Helens. There we saw devastation that dwarfs anything that man can do short of nuclear explosions. We saw forests growing vigorously on managed land, and on land where nothing is being done, vegetation is moving in inexorably on what was a waste land in late May, 1980. We were told of fish returning to the rivers that had been “destroyed.” We saw an elk herd that is using the land formerly covered with old-growth that is now essentially treeless. The capacity of the land, plants and animals to recover from catastrophe is tremendous. One wonders about the assertions we hear repeatedly about fragile environments. I could not help but contrast the difference between the appearance of the landscape where man had intervened and (the national forest landscape) where he had not. The new forest is unequivocal evidence that man can work hand in hand with the environment to good effect.”
- Dr. Benjamin Stout
“It takes a noble man to plant a seed for a tree that will some day give shade to people he may never meet.”
- David Trueblood
“I know many people distrust thinning, fearing a return to the days when too much harvesting was occurring in National Forests, but I don’t see how it could happen. Far greater risks lie in accepting the idea that the best way to protect National Forests is to set them aside in no-harvest reserves. I’m a wilderness fan and would favor adding appropriate lands to the Wilderness system, but major portions of the National Forest System are not suitable for Wilderness designation and ought to be managed for multiple benefits, including commercial timber production.”
- Dr. Jack Ward Thomas
“It will be made a wasteland, parched and desolate before me; the whole land will be laid waste because there is no one who cares.”
- Jeremiah 12:11
“When the British arrived, they started cutting down indigenous forests and replacing them with monocultural forests, such as pines and eucalyptus trees, which were quick growing and so would supply material for telephone poles and housing.”
- Wangari Maathai
“Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”
- Warren Buffett
“The groves were God's first temples.”
- William Cullen Bryant
“If ecosystem management is to succeed, attention must be paid to smaller, local ecosystems. There are unique landscapes, each different from the other, yet linked to one another and to larger landscapes in a variety of ways. It is here that citizens and managers should join together to decide how the land will be used. It is also here where dedicated land managers should decide what must be left intact to keep the land sustainable, and what can be removed or otherwise used to meet some of the needs of people.”
- Dr. William Moore
“When we plant trees, we plant the seeds of peace and seeds of hope.”
- Wangari Maathai
“How ridiculous is it that we have to import lumber because our own national forests, which hold millions of acres of dead and dying timber, are no longer managed for the timber they could produce? Our family would probably build a new sawmill here in Flagstaff capable of handling the small diameter trees that most everyone agrees must be removed from our forests to reduce the risk of wildfire, but we’re unwilling to make the investment without federal assurances of a stable and adequate long-term log supply.”
- Allen Ribelin
“A grove of giant redwoods or sequoias should be kept just as we keep a great or beautiful cathedral.”
- Theodore Roosevelt
“Plantation forestry saves more endangered species in a month than most American conservationists save in their lifetimes. As federal logging in the Pacific Northwest is slowed to a virtual standstill, species extinction in tropical forests has accelerated at a thunderous rate. Is saving the spotted owl and the marbled murrelet worth the loss of 8,000 to 10,000 species in the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Madagascar? Not in my opinion.”
- Dr. William Libby
“Environmentalism increasingly reflects urban perspectives. As people move to cities, they become infatuated with fantasies of land untouched by humans. This demographic shift is revealed through ongoing debates over endangered species, grazing, water rights, private property, mining and logging. And it is partly a healthy trend. But this urbanization of environmental values also signals the loss of a rural way of life and the disappearance of hands-on experience with nature. So the irony: as popular concern for preservation increases, public understanding about how to achieve it declines.”
- Dr. Alston Chase
“Misconceptions about naturalness are seriously eroding the public’s ability to deal effectively with land. The undisturbed old-growth landscape many envision never existed, and the quest to achieve it is undermining science-based efforts to restore a range of more viable growing conditions. The public is loving its forests to death.”
- Dr. Edward Buckner
“We're finally going to get the bill for the Industrial Age. If the projections are right, it's going to be a big one: the ecological collapse of the planet.”
- Jeremy Rifkin
“The lesson in “Playing God” is that there is no such thing as leaving nature alone. People are part of creation. We do not have the option of choosing not to be stewards of the land. We must master the art and science of good stewardship. Environmentalists do not understand that the only way to preserve nature is to manage nature.”
- Dr. Alston Chase
“The diligent farmer plants trees, of which he himself will never see the fruit.”
- Cicero