You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands. Instead of the thornbush will grow the pine tree, and instead of briers the myrtle will grow. This will be for the LORD's renown, for an everlasting sign, which will not be destroyed.

-the prophet Isaiah (c.760-690 B.C.) from Isaiah 55:12-13
from the New International Version of the Bible  

It took more than three thousand years to make some of the trees in these western woods…Through all the wonderful, eventful centuries since Christ's time – and long before that – God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand straining, leveling tempests and floods; but he cannot save them from fools.

-John Muir (1838-1914), Atlantic Monthly 1897

A people without children would face a hopeless future; a country without trees is almost as helpless.

-Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), 26th President of the United States  

Upon the rivers which are tributary to the Mississippi and also upon those which empty themselves into Lake Michigan, there are interminable forests of pine, sufficient to supply all the wants of the citizens…for all time to come.

-Ben C. Eastman (1812-1856), Wisconsin congressman
from speech to the U.S. House of Representatives, 22 July 1852  

I think that I shall never see
A billboard lovely as a tree.
Indeed, unless the billboards fall
I'll never see a tree at all.

-Ogden Nash (1902-1971)
from The Ogden Nash Pocket Book, 1943  

The forest is my loyal friend,
Like God it useth me.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), "Waldeinsamkeit"  

Forests were the first temples of the Divinity, and it is in the forests that men have grasped the first idea of architecture.

-Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand (1768-1848),
Genie du christianisme, 1802 *  

If ever you come upon a grove of ancient trees which have grown to an exceptional height, shutting out a view of sky by a veil of pleached and intertwining branches, then the loftiness of the forest, the seclusion of the spot and your marvel at the thick unbroken shade in the midst of the open spaces, will prove to you the presence of deity.

-Lucius Annaeus Seneca (5 BC-65 AD), On the God Within Us, 
Moral Epistles, tr. Gummere, 1918

Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world.

-John Muir (1838-1914)

Nothing is more beautiful than the loveliness of the woods before sunrise.

-George Washington Carver (1864-1943)  

A grove of giant redwoods or sequoias should be kept just as we keep a great or beautiful cathedral.

-Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), 26th President of the United States
Natural History Magazine, 1919 *  

Going to the woods is going home.

-John Muir (1838-1914)  

The forests in His strength rejoice;
Hark! on the evening breeze,
As once of old, the Lord God’s voice
Is heard among the trees.

James Montgomery (1771-1854), The God of Nature and of Grace

A tree is beautiful, but what’s more, it has a right to life; like water, the sun and the stars, it is essential. Life on earth is inconceivable without trees. Forests create climate, climate influences peoples’ character, and so on and so forth. There can be neither civilization nor happiness if forests crash down under the axe, if the climate is harsh and severe, if people are also harsh and severe.... What a terrible future!

-Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904), Letter to A.S. Suvorin, 
October 18, 1888

A woodland in full color is awesome as a forest fire, in magnitude at least, but a single tree is like a dancing tongue of flame to warm the heart.

-Hal Borland (1900-1978), Sundial of the Seasons, 1964  

Much of the threat facing the remaining intact forests boils down to bad economics, bad management, and corruption… We are rapidly moving towards a world where wilderness forests are confined primarily to islands of parks and reserves, with surrounding areas managed commercially for timber and other resources. The health of the planet's forests will depend on how well we manage and protect these remaining areas.

-Dirk Bryant, co-director of Global Forest Watch,
quoted in "Myth of World Forest Cover Shattered,"
Environment News Service, 4 Apr 2002  

Sometimes you can see how there is erosion, and you can see how there is deforestation. It's very widespread in some parts of the world. We would like to see, from the astronauts' point of view, people take good care of the Earth and replace the resources that have been used. 

-Commander Eileen Collins of the space shuttle Discovery, 
conversation from space with Japanese officials in Tokyo  
including Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, reported by CNN.com, 4 Aug 05

A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.

-William Blake (1757-1827), The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1790-93

I like to take the time out to listen to the trees, much in the same way that I listen to a sea shell, holding my ear against the rough bark of the trunk, hearing the inner singing of the sap. It’s a lovely sound, the beating of the heart of the tree.

-Madeline L'Engle (1918-2007), A Stone for a Pillow, 1986

I hate a man who skins the land.

-Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), 26th President of the United States, 
quoted by Stewart L. Udall in “How the Wilderness Was Won,” 
American Heritage Feb/Mar 2000

I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

-Robert Frost (1874–1963), "Birches" from Mountain Interval, 1920  

And the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground--trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

-Genesis 2:9 in the New International Version of the Bible  

For in the true nature of things, if we rightly consider, every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver.

-Martin Luther (1483-1546)  

The value of the things is not in themselves autonomously, but that God made them, and thus they deserve to be treated with high respect.  The tree in the field is to be treated with respect.  It is not to be romanticized as the old lady romanticizes her cat (that is, she reads human reactions into it).  This is wrong because it is not true.  When you drive the axe into the tree when you need firewood, you are not cutting down a person; you are cutting down a tree.  But while we should not romanticize the tree, we must realize God made it and it deserves respect because He made is as a tree.

-Francis A. Schaeffer (1912-1984), Pollution and the Death of Man, 1970  

When we consider the tree…we may chop it down, so long as we remember it is a tree, with its own value as a tree. It is not a zero. Some of our housing developments demonstrate the practical application of this. Bulldozers have gone in to flatten everything and clear the trees before the houses are begun. The end result is ugliness. It would have cost another thousand dollars to bulldoze around the trees, so they were simply bulldozed down without question. And then we wonder, looking at the result, how people can live there. It is less human in its barrenness and even economically it is poorer as the top soil washes away. So when man breaks God’s truth, in reality he suffers.

-Francis A. Schaeffer (1912-1984), Pollution and the Death of Man, 1970  

Hundreds of thousands of terrified people spilled into this region in 1994. Fleeing one of modern history’s worst atrocities—the killing fields of Rwanda—they set the stage for another spectacular collision, this time between man and his environment… Armies of men, women and children slashed and felled millions of trees in the previously virgin forests of Zaire’s Virunga National Park, Africa’s oldest game sanctuary, in a daily search for fuel. In the Kagera region of northwest Tanzania, refugees consumed more than 1,200 tons of wood per day.

-Ray Wilkinson, “Living on the Edge,” Refugees, Vol 2, No. 127 2002

Of all man's works of art, a cathedral is greatest. A vast and majestic tree is greater than that.

-Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887), Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit, 1870 *  

The mission of men there seems to be, like so many busy demons, to drive the forest all out of the country, from every solitary beaver swamp and mountain-side, as soon as possible.

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), “Ktaadn,” The Maine Woods, 1864

If there were but one erect and solid standing tree in the woods, all creatures would go to rub against it and make sure of their footing.

-Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), 
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, 1849

Strange that so few ever come to the woods to see how the pine lives and grows and spires, lifting its evergreen arms to the light, -- to see its perfect success; but most are content to behold it in the shape of many broad boards brought to market, and deem that its true success. But the pine is no more lumber than man is, and to be made into boards and houses is no more its true and highest use than the truest use of a man is to be cut down and made into manure. There is a higher law affecting our relation to pines as well as to men. A pine cut down, a dead pine, is no more a pine than a dead human carcass is a man. Can he who has discovered only some of the values of whalebone and whale oil be said to have discovered the true use of the whale? Can he who slays the elephant for his ivory be said to have "seen the elephant " ? These are petty and accidental uses; just as if a stronger race were to kill us in order to make buttons and flageolets of our bones; for everything may serve a lower as well as a higher use. Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine-trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it.

-Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), "Chesuncook," The Maine Woods, 1864  

Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away; and if they could, they would still be destroyed – chased and hunted down as long as fun or a dollar could be got of their bark hides.

-John Muir (1838-1914), Atlantic Monthly 1897  

A man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit.

-Elton Trueblood (1900-1994)  

When you plant a tree, never plant only one. Plant three – one for shade, one for fruit, one for beauty.

-African proverb  

He who plants a tree plants a hope.

–Welsh proverb

Trees can reduce the heat of a summer's day, quiet a highway's noise, feed the hungry, provide shelter from the wind and warmth in the winter. You see, the forests are the sanctuaries not only of wildlife, but also of the human spirit. And every tree is a compact between generations.

-George Bush, 41st U.S. President, from speech in Sioux Falls, SD, 1989  

As we examined what we thought were still vast, untouched stretches of intact forests in the world, we came to the conclusion that they are fast becoming a myth. Much of the green canopy that is left is, in reality, already crisscrossed by roads, mining and logging concessions.

-Jonathan Lash, World Resources Institute president,
quoted in "Myth of World Forest Cover Shattered,"
Environment News Service, 4 Apr 2002  

The [U.S. Forest] timber program lost $407 million in 1998, making it the worst financial year ever for the program. The new figures represent a 23 percent jump from the program's $330 million average loss from 1992-1997, which the General Accounting Office had previously reported. The Forest Service's timber sale program loses money because revenue from timber sales does not cover the costs of timber sale preparation, administration, road building and other overhead costs.

-Cat Lazaroff, "U.S. Timber Program Posts Record Losses,"
Environment News Service, 12 Jun 2001  

Costs and revenues the U.S. Forest Service reported for its timber program in 1998 and 1999 were "totally unreliable," making it impossible for congressional auditors to tell whether national forest logging loses or makes money, the General Accounting Office reported on Tuesday. Forest Service accounting rules were so loose they may misrepresent logging costs as expenses for recreation programs and count employee time toward logging expenses even when an employee is working on something else, the GAO said. "Given the large number of transactions and lines of accounting and the detail involved, accountability was lost and any information related to the cost of the timber sales program was rendered totally unreliable," the GAO wrote in a letter to Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., and Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., who requested an audit of Forest Service timber dollars.

-Michael Milstein, "Auditors rake Forest Service for accounting methods,"
The Oregonian, 24 Oct 2001  

We want the active and zealous help of every man far-sighted enough to realize the importance from the standpoint of the nation's welfare in the future of preserving the forests.

-Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), 26th U.S. President  

I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.

-Willa Cather (1873–1947), O Pioneers!, 1913  

Plants are the young of the world, vessels of health and vigor; but they grope ever upwards towards consciousness; the trees are imperfect men, and seem to bemoan their imprisonment, rooted in the ground.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), "Nature," Essays, 1844  

It has been said that trees are imperfect men, and seem to bemoan their imprisonment rooted in the ground. But they never seem so to me. I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do. They go wandering forth in all directions with every wind, going and coming like ourselves, traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day, and through space heaven knows how fast and far!

-John Muir (1838-1914)  

Plant trees. They give us two of the most crucial elements for our survival: oxygen and books.

-A Whitney Brown  

I see a million hills green with crop-yielding trees and a million neat farm homes snuggled in the hills. These beautiful tree farms hold the hills from Boston to Austin, from Atlanta to Des Moines. The hills of my vision have farming that fits them and replaces the poor pasture, the gullies, and the abandoned lands that characterize today so large a part of these hills.

-J. Russell Smith (1874-1966), Tree Crops, 1929  

Dense overgrown forests and rangelands have grown like a cancer. They need to be treated.

-Interior Secretary Gale Norton, 
voicing her approval of President Bush's plan to expedite 
logging in national forests, 
reported in the Washington Post, Mike Allen and Eric Pianin, 12 Dec 02 

I think that I shall never see
A poem as lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

-Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918), "Trees," 1914  

As the poet said, 'Only God can make a tree,' probably because it's so hard to figure out how to get the bark on.

-Woody Allen  

I remember once visiting an outdoor exhibition of sculpture in Arnhem, the Netherlands. One of the artists had placed this notice at the base of a majestic beech: "Statues are hewn by fools like me: only God could make this tree." The Taoists looked at the inside of the tree. They saw God present, not as the super-sculptor, but as the primal force from which the tree drew its being and its specific form. Becoming aware of this divine origin was for them "great knowledge", to be distinguished from the "small knowledge" of our petty, every-day existence.

-John Wijngaards, God Within Us, 1988 

A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease.

-John Muir (1838-1914)  

Humanity is cutting down its forests, apparently oblivious to the fact that we may not be able to live without them.

-Isaac Asimov (1920-1992),
Isaac Asimov's Book of Science and Nature Quotations, 1988*  

For years, the government had estimated that Mexico was losing about 1.5 million acres of forest annually to logging, fires and the expansion of farms and ranches. But according to a multi-agency study of satellite images taken between 1993 and 2000, annual forest loss in those years averaged about 2.78 million acres, Environment Secretary Victor Lichtinger said. Over eight years, Mexico lost forest equivalent to the area of Ireland. Scientists estimate that Brazil has the world's highest deforestation rate, followed by Mexico and Indonesia.

–Associated Press, "Mexico Losing Forests Rapidly," 
LATimes.com 4 Dec 2001  

Do not cut down the tree that gives you shade.

-Arabian proverb  

O never harm the dreaming world,
the world of green, the world of leaves,
but let its million palms unfold
the adoration of the trees

It is a love in darkness wrought
obedient to the unseen sun,
longer than memory, a thought
deeper than the graves of time.

The turning spindles of the cells
weave a slow forest over space,
the dance of love, creation,
out of time moves not a leaf,
and out of summer, not a shade.

-Kathleen Raine, Vegetation, Collected Poems, 1956  

Our forests are not for toilet paper. They are worth more standing than cut. That deserves to be defended, not only by native peoples but also by environmentalists.

–Winona LaDuke at the West Coast Ancient Forest Activists Conference
in Ashland, Oregon,
reported by Patrick Mazza, Jan 1995  

The poor ignorant savage even apologized to a tree for having to cut it down and had sacred groves and woods he left standing—homes of the gods or of his fellow creatures—whereas his successor, who ungodded nature, ravages the heights and brings floods, dustbowls and salt pans into the once fertile lowlands. Or worse, defoliates to facilitate hunting down his brother man.

-Jacob Trapp (1899-1992), The Light of a Thousand Suns, 1973  

Afghanistan itself is an economic and environmental nightmare with literally everything ranging from individual village homes and fields to factories and hospitals needing to be rebuilt from scratch. In an indication of how one environmental disaster can cause ripple effects, Afghanistan is so short of wood millions of dollars worth of timber will be imported from as far away as South Africa and Tanzania to help rebuild the country.

-Ray Wilkinson, “Living on the Edge,” Refugees, Vol 2, No. 127 2002

Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky. We fell them and turn them into newspapers that we may record our emptiness.

-Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931)

Let the trees be consulted
before you take any action
every time you breathe in
thank a tree
let treeroots crack parking lots
at the world bank headquarters
let loggers be druids
specially trained and rewarded
to sacrifice trees at auspicious times
let carpenters be master artisans
let lumber be treasured like gold
let chainsaws be played like saxophones
let soldiers on maneuvers plant trees
give police and criminals
a shovel and a thousand seedlings
let business men carry pocketfuls of acorns
let newlyweds honeymoon in the woods
walk don't drive
stop reading newspapers
stop writing poetry
squat under a tree
and tell stories

-John Wright  

A new study has cast doubts on an important element of a proposed treaty to fight global warming: the planting of new forests in an effort to sop up carbon dioxide, a heat-trapping gas. The research concludes that old, wild forests are far better than plantations of young trees at ridding the air of carbon dioxide, which is released when coal, oil and other fossil fuels are burned…In old forests, huge amounts of carbon taken from the air are locked away not only in the tree trunks and branches, but also deep in the soil, where the carbon can stay for many centuries, said Kevin R. Gurney, a research scientist at Colorado State University. When such a forest is cut, he said, almost all of that stored carbon is eventually returned to the air in the form of carbon dioxide. "It took a huge amount of time to get that carbon sequestered in those soils," he said, "so if you release it, even if you plant again, it'll take equally long to get it back."

-Andrew C. Revkin,
"Planting New Forests Can't Match Saving Old Ones
In Cutting Greenhouse Gases, Study Finds,"
New York Times, 22 September 2000  

O if we but knew what we do
When we delve or hew—
Hack and rack the growing green!
Since country is so tender
To touch, her being so slender,
That, like this sleek and seeing ball
But a prick will make no eye at all,
Where we, even where we mean
To mend her we end her,
When we hew or delve:
After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.

-Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), "Binsey Poplars"  

Recent forest fires in Indonesia and Brazil illustrate the global impact of local forest loss and the potent combination of forces fueling their destruction. The world's forests now lose more carbon to the atmosphere than they absorb-a recent shift. In fact, up to one quarter of all the carbon added to the atmosphere by human activities now comes from cutting and burning forests. The Indonesian forest fires in 1997 pumped more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere in a few months than all of Europe's industrial activity did in a year.

-Janet N. Abramovitz, Worldwatch Press Release on Forests, 8 April, 1998  

When I can go just where I want to go,
There is a copse of birch trees that I know;
And, as in Eden Adam walked with God,
When in that quiet aisle my feet have trod
I have found peace among the silver trees,
Known comfort in the cool kiss of the breeze
Heard music in its whisper, and have known
Most certainly that I was not alone!

-Father Andrew, The Birch Copse  

As Americans, we have become comfortable with our environment of concrete, steel, plastics, and artificial fibers, colors, and flavorings to such a degree that many question whether or not we even need to focus on a relationship with the creation. We have lost the desire to seek God and the ability to see God in all things. And perhaps, we have closed our eyes to the importance of God's creation as expressed through the forests because we have substituted the wonders of human creation for the wonders of God's creation. This form of idolatry should concern us.

-Susan Drake, former Senior Conservation officer for the U.S. State Department,
"The Global Forest" from Religion and Forests, Spring 2000  

Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them.

-Bill Vaughn  

A tree never hits an automobile except in self defense.

- Woody Allen  

Rain forest
Mist and mystery
Teeming green
Green brain facing lobotomy
Climate control centre for the world
Ancient cord of coexistence
Hacked by parasitic greedhead scam -
From Sarawak to Amazonas
Costa Rica to mangy B.C. hills -
Cortege rhythm of falling timber.
What kind of currency grows in these new deserts,
These brand new flood plains?
If a tree falls in the forest does anybody hear?
If a tree falls in the forest does anybody hear?
Does anybody hear the forest fall?

-Bruce Cockburn from his song 
"If a tree falls in the forest does anybody hear?" 1988  

What will the axemen do, when they have cut their way from sea to sea?

-James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851), The Pioneers, 1823 *  

The institute's figures show 11,200 square kilometers of Amazon forest were destroyed last year -- an area nearly equivalent to nearly half the size of Sicily.  Experts estimate 2008's total will be close to 20,000 square kilometers.  In the past two decades, 700,000 square kilometers of the four million square kilometers that make up the forest have been razed, which corresponds to an area the size of a football field disappearing every 10 seconds.

-Agence France-Presse,
"Worsening Amazon deforestation embarrasses Brazil's govt," 3 Jun 08   

Deforestation in the Amazon in 2004 was the second worst ever as more rain forest was cleared for soy farms and cattle ranches, according to new figures released by the Brazilian government.  Satellite photos and data showed 10,088 square miles of rain forest were destroyed in the 12 months ending in August 2004, the Brazilian Environmental Ministry said.  The destruction was nearly 6 percent more than in the same period the year before.  The deforestation hit record numbers in 1995, when the Amazon shrank a record 11,200 square miles, an area roughly the size of Massachusetts.

-MSNBC News Services, "Amazon reduced by 10,000 square miles,"
19 May 2005  

Illegal logging and farming last year destroyed an area of Brazil's Amazon rain forest bigger than the U.S. state of Hawaii… The annual report on devastation of the world's largest rain forest also showed that the pace of destruction remained mostly steady despite increased policing of threatened areas… The Brazilian Amazon, which alone is larger than Western Europe, lost 16,926 square kilometres (6,347 square miles) of forest last year, according to satellite imagery. The compares to 17,383 square kilometres the previous year, with a 3 percent margin of error.

-Planet Ark, "Brazil loses Hawaii-sized chunk of Amazon in 1999,"
Reuters 12 Apr 2000  

When you enter the land and plant any kind of fruit tree, regard its fruit as forbidden. For three years you are to consider it forbidden; it must not be eaten. In the fourth year all its fruit will be holy, an offering of praise to the LORD. But in the fifth year you may eat its fruit. In this way your harvest will be increased. I am the LORD your God.

-Leviticus 19:23-25 in the New International Version of the Bible  

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

-Nelson Henderson  

He who plants a tree
Plants a hope.

-Lucy Larcom (1826-1893), "Plant a Tree"  

He that planteth a tree is a servant of God, he provideth a kindness for many generations, and faces that he hath not seen shall bless him.

-Henry Van Dyke (1852-1933)  

A man does not plant a tree for himself; he plants it for posterity.

-Alexander Smith (1830-1867), Dreamthorp, 1863 *  

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.

-Martin Luther (1483-1546)  

Cling, swing,
Spring, sing,
Swing up into the apple tree.

T. S. Eliot 1888–1965), New Hampshire

It will never rain roses. When we want to have more roses, we must plant more trees.

-George Eliot [Mary Anne Evans], (1819-1880)  

The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)  

All over the world, there are libraries of a sort. They are among the most beautiful places on the earth, and they hold more information than the Library of Congress. Within these libraries are millions of books, each a uniques masterpiece to see and touch. They are teaching this language to scientists. However, so far only one percent of the books have been deciphered. Some tell how to find new medicines; others reveal new things to eat…These treasure houses of knowledge are the ancient forests of our planet.

-Brock Adams, National Audubon Society quoted by Susan Drake,
"The Global Forest" in Religion and Forests, Spring 2000  

And see the peaceful trees extend
their myriad leaves in leisured dance—
they bear the weight of sky and cloud
upon the fountain of their veins.

-Kathleen Raine, from Envoi, Collected Poems, 1956  

Only one third of Europe's trees are healthy according to the European Commission's annual 2000 report on the continent's forests. Forty-one percent of trees are classified as being in the "warning stage" and 20 percent are damaged, says the report, which concludes that further cuts in air pollution are needed before forests can be sustainably managed. The European Commission and the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) began monitoring the health of Europe's forests in 1986. Through a network of 5,700 plots in 30 countries, the project has grown into one of the world's largest biomonitoring systems… "These results confirm the general trend of deterioration of the crown [defoliation] condition for the main tree species over the last years," said the report. "On average the crown condition in Europe between 1992 and 1999 worsened on approximately 30 percent of the observation plots and improved on only 15 percent of the plots."

-Environment News Service, "Pollution Takes Its Toll on Europe's Forests"
11 October 2000  

Sudden Oak Death, a swimming, two-tailed fungus that has killed tens of thousands of California oaks since 1995, has been discovered on California redwoods and Douglas firs. The infected redwood saplings were found at Jack London State Park in Sonoma County and Henry Cowell State Park in Santa Cruz County. The infected Douglas firs were found at another site in Sonoma County. The discovery of this fungus in California's redwoods, symbolic of the Earth's ancient forests, is disheartening for many people. The redwoods can reach heights of more than 350 feet and live to be 2,000 years old.

“Sudden Oak Death Strikes California Redwoods, Firs,” 
Environment News Service, 5 Sep 2002

When you have a highly destructive insect epidemic, what that really should be telling us is not that we have an insect problem, but that we have a forest health problem. It's monocultures and fire suppression that cause insects to become nuisances. The pests that plague us are all too often of our own making.

- Tim Schowalter, Oregon State University professor of entomology
quoted in "Forest Insects Can Be Partners, Not Pests,"
Environment News Service, 30 Oct 2001  

We must protect the forests for our children, grandchildren and children yet to be born. We must protect the forests for those who can't speak for themselves such as the birds, animals, fish and trees.

-Qwatsinas (Hereditary Chief Edward Moody), Nuxalk Nation  

We have long viewed forests as wasted or even hostile space, valuable only if the trees were cut for timber and the land was tamed for agriculture or settlements. To be sure, there are some early and ongoing examples of sound forest management based on an understanding of forests as vital ecosystems. But destructive practices reflect the more common relationship with forests, one that continues today. In ancient times, the Mediterranean region was moister and more wooded before trees were cut for shipping, fuel, building, and agriculture. The Philippines' loss of 90 percent of its primary forest during the timber boom of the 1970s provides a more recent example of humankind's short-sightedness.

-Janet N. Abramovitz,
"Taking a Stand: Cultivating a New Realtionship with the World's Forests,"
Worldwatch Paper, April, 1998  

Whoever does not love trees, does not love God.

-Elder Amphilochios of Patmos (1888-1970)  

"Us sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved. You ever notice that trees do everything to git attention we do, except walk?"

-Alice Walker  

He who tends a fig tree will eat its fruit, and he who looks after his master will be honored

-Proverbs 27:18 in the New International Version of the Bible  

In Jewish tradition, one of the metaphors for God is the Tree of Life. We celebrate a midwinter festival that is the "new year for trees," when their life-juices stir once more and they begin to renew themselves from a wintry near-death. That festival is also understood as the "New Year of The Tree"—the time when God's abundance reawakens in the world. Since the forests are a direct expression of God's beauty, we must stir ourselves to save these forests now when they are dying in what could become a universal winter.

-Rabbi Arthur Waskow, director of The Shalom Center, Philadelphia, PA
quoted in Religion and Forests, Spring 2000  

If a man kills a tree before its time, it is as though he had murdered a soul.

-Nahman Bratzlav, quoted in Menorah Journal, 1924 *  

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

-e.e.cummings (1894-1962)  

At least there is hope for a tree: If it is cut down, it will sprout again, and its new shoots will not fail. Its roots may grow old in the ground and its stump die in the soil, yet at the scent of water it will bud and put forth shoots like a plant.

–Job 14:7-9 in the New International Version of the Bible  

Spiritually, trees play a unique role in the Jewish and Christian scriptures, from the Garden of Eden to the Cross of Christ. Biologically, in great forest communities, they help sustain life on our planet, giving off oxygen, anchoring soil, keeping stream and rivers clear, and providing habitation for thousands of species. How can religious persons not care about the widespread destruction of these creatures of God? We need to love them as our very selves, as neighbors in earth's community of life.

–Sr. Elizabeth Johnson CSJ, Fordham Distinguished Professor of Theology,
Bronx, NY quoted in Religion and Forests, Spring 2000  

Reading about nature is fine, but if a person walks in the woods and listens carefully, he can learn more than what is in books, for they speak with the voice of God.

-George Washington Carver (1864-1943)  

Believe one who knows:
You will find something greater in woods than books.
Trees and stones will teach you
that which you can never learn from masters

-Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153)  

Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me?

-Walt Whitman (1819–1892), "Song of the Open Road," 1856  

One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the ages can.

-William Wordsworth (1770–1850), "The Tables Turned"  

Trees are the earth's endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.

-Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), Fireflies, 1928  

A tree's a tree. How many more do you need to look at?

-Ronald Reagan, 40^th U.S. President from speech, 12 Sept. 1965
quoted in Sacramento Bee (California, 12 March 1966) 

Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do.

-Ronald Reagan (1911-1941), 40^th U.S. President  

I am alien to the noises of cities, of people, to the greed of machinery that does not sleep, the hum of power that eats up the night. Where rain, sunlight and darkness are contemned, I cannot sleep. I do not trust anything that has been fabricated to replace the climate of woods or prairies. I can have no confidence in places where the air is first fouled and then cleansed, where the water is first made deadly and then made safe with other poisons. There is nothing in the world of buildings that is not fabricated, and if a tree gets in among the apartment houses by mistake it is taught to grow chemically. It is given precise reason for existing. They put a sign on it saying it is for health, beauty, perspective; that it is for peace, for prosperity; that it was planted by the mayor's daughter. All of this is mystification. The city itself lives on its own myth.

-Thomas Merton (1915-1968), "Rain and the Rhinoceros"
from Raids on the Unspeakable, 1965  

The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity . . . and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.

-William Blake (1757–1827), Letter, 23 Aug. 1799
in The Letters of William Blake  

Trees, proud standing people
stretching fingertips to the sky, reaching, praying
glorious attention, breathing light.
strength
shelter
timeless confidence
bending and firm
comforting
rooted chorus line
dancing with the moon, the wind, the clouds
framing bursts of stars
tender rugged celebration
absorbing and releasing life
each holy branch holding
the power of the Universe.
There.

-Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)  

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.

-Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), Walden, 1854  

What is sour in the house a bracing walk in the woods makes sweet.

-Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)   

If I were a Brazilian without land or money or the means to feed my children, I would be burning the rain forest too.

-Sting (Gordon Matthew Sumner) in the International Herald Tribune, 1989  

We, the richest nation in the world, are going to tell the dirt-poor people of Brazil and Indonesia and Zaire to be good environmentalists and not cut down their rainforests? Ha, We're showing them how.

-Elliot A. Norse, Los Angeles Times, 6 Aug 1990 *  

Many of the forests of the world are being mowed down… But the rest of the world isn't going to say, "Okay, we'll save our forests, but you Americans can keep driving all your cars!" There has to be give and take.

-Thomas R. Pickering, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations,
quoted in Cosmopolitan, Sept 1989 *  

The rainforests are being destroyed not out of ignorance or stupidity but largely because of poverty and greed.

-Michael H. Robinson, Saving the Tropical Forests, 1988 *  

Sensing us, the trees tremble in their sleep,
The living leaves recoil before our fires,
Baring to us war-charred and broken branches,
And seeing theirs, we for our own destruction weep.

-Kathleen Raine, from London Trees, Collected Poems, 1956  

Oh, I don't object, of course, to cutting wood from necessity, but why destroy the forests? The woods of Russia are trembling under the blows of the axe. Millions of trees have perished. The homes of the wild animals and birds have been desolated; the rivers are shrinking, and many beautiful landscapes are gone forever. And why? Because men are too lazy and stupid to stoop down and pick up their fuel from the ground.

-Anton Chekhov (1860-1904), Uncle Vanya, 1897  

The object of our forest policy is not to preserve the forests because they are beautiful – or because they are refuges for the wild creatures of the wilderness – but the making of prosperous homes – every other consideration becomes secondary.

–Gifford Pinchot (1865-1946), first chief of the U.S. Forest Service,
from speech 1903 *  

The federal government lost $126 million in 1998 from logging on national forests, according to a preliminary report released Tuesday by the Forest Service. The agency spent $672 million to administer timber sales that generated $546 million in revenue, the report said. The Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska, the country's largest national forest, produced the most red ink, according to the report. Federal logging in the Tongass turned revenue of $6.5 million in 1998. But it cost the Forest Service $35.6 million to run the Tongass timber program that year.

-Paula Dobbyn, "Feds lose cash in forest logging"
Anchorage Daily News 7 March 2001  

The love of wilderness is more than a hunger for what is always beyond reach; it is also an expression of loyalty to the earth, the earth which bore us and sustains us, the only paradise we shall ever know, the only paradise we ever need, if only we had the eyes to see.... No, wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, as vital to our lives as water and good bread.

-Edward Paul Abbey (1927-1989)  

It is well established that the protection afforded by the forest against the escape of moisture from its soil, insures the permanence and regularity of natural springs, not only within the limits of the woods, but at some distance beyond their borders, and this contributes to the supply of an element essential to both vegetable and animal life. As the forests are destroyed, the springs which flowed from the woods, and, consequently, the greater water courses fed by them, diminish both in number and in volume. With the disappearance of the forest, all is changed. The face of the earth no longer a sponge, but a dust heap, and the floods which the waters of the sky pour out hurry swiftly along its slopes, carrying in suspension vast quantities of earthy particles which increase the abrading power and mechanical force of the cur-rent, and augmented by the sand and gravel of falling banks, fill the beds of the streams, divert them into new channels and obstruct their outlets. The rivulets, wanting their former regularity of supply and deprived of the protecting shade of the woods, are heated, evaporated, and thus reduced in their summer currents, but swollen to raging torments in autumn and in spring.

- George Perkins Marsh, Man and Nature, 1965

Stop beating trees to a pulp – Recycle!

-bumper sticker *  

The U.S. currently gobbles up some 200 million tons of wood products annually, with consumption increasing by four percent every year. The pulp and paper industry is the biggest culprit. U.S. paper producers alone consume one billion trees—or 12,430 square miles of forests—every year, while producing 735 pounds of paper for every American. The U.S. has less than five percent of the world’s population, but consumes 30 percent of the world’s paper. Only five percent of America’s virgin forests remain, while 70 percent of the fiber consumed by the pulp and paper industry continues to be generated from virgin wood.

-Jim Motavalli, “The Paper Chase,” E-Magazine, May/Jun 04

My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,
All felled, felled, are all felled;
Of a fresh and following folded rank
Not spared, not one
That dandled a sandalled
Shadow that swam or sank
On meadow and river and wind-
wandering weed-winding bank.

-Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), "Binsey Poplars"  

When you are besieging a town and the war drags on, do not destroy the trees. Eat the fruit, but do not cut down the trees. They are not enemies that need to be attacked!

-Deuteronomy 20:19 from the New Living Translation of the Bible  

Our generation has inherited a planet ravaged by greed. Much of a once magnificent forest inheritance is already gone. We can remain complacent, or intervene and preserve what is left. Complacency will assure that the world of our grandchildren will have been plundered even of what remains. But if we make our lives consistent with our faith and our voices heard, our witness can stand as an impediment to further destruction.

-Anne Glynn-Mackoul, World Council of Churches
quoted in Religion and Forests, Spring 2000  

america was once a paradise of timberland and stream but it is dying because of the greed and money lust of a thousand little kings who slashed the timber all to hell and would not be controlled and changed the climate and stole the rainfall from posterity

-archie, Don Marquis (1878-1937),
the life and times of archie and mehitabel, 1935  

We have now used taxpayers' dollars to build so many roads for loggers that their total length is equal to eight times the entire length of the whole Interstate Highway System. That just does not make sense.

-Albert Gore, U.S. Senator, Conservation 90, Dec 1990  

They absorb carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide and give out oxygen. What could be more desirable? And they look good in the bargain. Stop chopping down the rain forests and plant more saplings, and we're on our way.

-Isaac Asimov (1920-1992), quoted in Time, 19 Dec 1988 *  

All the earth is at rest and is quiet: they are bursting into song. Even the trees of the wood are glad over you, the trees of Lebanon, saying, From the time of your fall no wood-cutter has come up against us with an axe.

-the prophet Isaiah (c.760-690 B.C.) from Isaiah 14:7-8
from the Bible in Basic English  

Woodman, spare that tree!
Touch not a single bough!
In youth it sheltered me,
And I'll protect it now.

-George Pope Morris (1802-1864), "Woodman, Spare That Tree," 1830 

What do we plant when we plant the tree?
We plant the ship that will cross the sea,
We plant the mast to carry the sails,
We plant the planks to withstand the gales—
The keel, the keelson, and beam and knee—
We plant the ship when we plant the tree.

-Henry Abbey (1842–1911), "What Do We Plant?" 

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

-Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), Walden Pond, 1854  

First I thought I was fighting for the rubber tappers, then I thought I was fighting for the Amazon, then I realized I was fighting for humanity.

-Chico Mendez (1944-1988) quoted in World Rainforest Movement,
Rainforest Destruction, 1990 * 

Let the trees of the forest rustle with praise before the LORD! For he is coming to judge the earth.

-1 Chronicles 16:33 from the New Living Translation of the Bible 

Tree at my window, window tree,
My sash is lowered when night comes on;
But let there never be curtain drawn
Between you and me.

-Robert Frost (1874–1963), "Tree at My Window"  

We have nothing to fear and a great deal to learn from trees, that vigorous and pacific tribe which without stint produces strengthening essences for us, soothing balms, and in whose gracious company we spend so many cool, silent and intimate hours.

-Marcel Proust (1871–1922), Pleasures and Regrets, 1896  

I love looking at you, hundred-year-old tree, loaded with shoots and boughs as though you were a stripling. Teach me the secret of growing old like you, open to life, to youth, to dreams, as somebody aware that youth and age are merely steps towards eternity.

-Dom Helder Camara (1909-1999), A Thousand Reasons for Living 

Destroying a rain forest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal.

-Edward O. Wilson, quoted in Time, 3 Sept 1990 *  

The first angel sounded his trumpet, and there came hail and fire mixed with blood, and it was hurled down upon the earth. A third of the earth was burned up, a third of the trees were burned up, and all the green grass was burned up.

-the Apostle John (c. A.D. 100) from the Book of Revelations 8:7
in the New International Version of the Bible  

What Jesus accomplished on the cross is more than the doorway back for lost mankind. When man sinned, the occasion of his fall was a tree, and the ground cursed brought forth thorns. When Jesus died, He died on a tree with a crown of thorns on His head, and he caught up creation's curse with our sin on the cross.

-Winkie Pratney from Healing the Land, 1993  

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.

–the Apostle John (c. A.D. 100) from the Book of Revelations 22:1-2
in the New International Version of the Bible