I studied at UC Santa Cruz before going on to do a grad program at UCLA. Santa Cruz was like an awesome hippie summer camp. I got to take a vacation from reality and hang out on beaches and in forests.
Aaron Koblin
Before you rip off three feet of toilet paper, consider that each year 500,000 acres of virgin boreal forest in northern Alberta and Ontario are being clear-cut to make the stuff. These forests are home to some 500 First Nation communities, as well as caribou and bears, moose and wolves, and, in the summertime, billions of songbirds.
Alex Shoumatoff
The Awa are a distinctive-looking, diminutive forest people, smaller than any of the dozen other Amazon tribespeople I have met. Reduced size is adaptive in a rain forest. You can move around more easily and unobtrusively. Not only humans but other species are smaller in rain forests.
The beauty of Maine is such that you can't really see it clearly while you live there. But now that I've moved away, with each return it all becomes almost hallucinatory: the dark blue water, the rocky coast with occasional flashes of white sand, the jasper stone beaches along the coast, the pine and fir forests somehow vivid in their stillness.
Alexander Chee
Trees are great. Don't get me started about how clever they are, how oxygen-generous, how time-formed in inner cyclic circles, how they provide homes for myriad creatures, how - back when this country was covered in forests - the word for sky was an Old English word that meant 'tops of trees.'
Ali Smith
The first and most natural way of lighting the houses of the American colonists, both in the North and South, was by the pine-knots of the fat pitch-pine, which, of course, were found everywhere in the greatest plenty in the forests.
Alice Morse Earle
While planting woodlands along rivers has been shown to work in small areas, it has been unclear whether it would be effective on a larger scale. But computer modelling indicates that restoring forests on floodplains could slow floodwaters and reduce the height of the flood downstream.
Alice Roberts
If we ever have free time, my partner and I are fond of going on walks through the local state forests and parks.
Amelia Atwater-Rhodes
I really want to dive in the kelp forests of Monterey Bay in California. I hear it's like floating through a forest.
Ashlan Gorse Cousteau
The degradation of natural resources such as forests and freshwater has removed much of the resilience that societies formerly enjoyed.
Barry Gardiner
I'd like to see the Amazon rainforests before they're all gone, and also the Galapagos - that's another one I'd like to do. I'd love to go diving in those areas. Basically, places, like, that are kind of going away, and I'd like to see them before they all become condos and high-rises.
Bill Engvall
In the rich world, the environmental situation has improved dramatically. In the United States, the most important environmental indicator, particulate air pollution, has been cut by more than half since 1955, rivers and coastal waters have dramatically improved, and forests are increasing.
Bjorn Lomborg
I grew up in the northernmost parts of New Jersey, known more for lush forests and old farmland than industrial wastelands and fist pumping.
Brad Leone
We've set aside tens of millions of acres of those northwestern forests for perpetuity. The unemployment rate has gone not up, but down. The economy has gone up.
Bruce Babbitt
To many people, 'biodiversity' is almost synonymous with the word 'nature,' and 'nature' brings to mind steamy forests and the big creatures that dwell there. Fair enough. But biodiversity is much more than that, for it encompasses not only the diversity of species, but also the diversity within species.
Cary Fowler
Safeguarding our common home is not only essential to protecting endangered species and preserving old-growth forests, it is also paramount to ending poverty, fighting injustice, and protecting the long-term survival of humankind and of our faith.
Catherine Cortez-Masto
Maintaining healthy forests is essential to those who make a living from the land and for those of us who use them for recreational purposes.
Cathy McMorris Rodgers
It is not acceptable that we continue to see thousands of acres burn because of forest fires, because of poor management on our forests, big kill, and we have these catastrophic situations take place when we are not able to take action.
Nature is a temple in which living columns sometimes emit confused words. Man approaches it through forests of symbols, which observe him with familiar glances.
Charles Baudelaire
Promoting the use of sustainable and renewable rainforest products can help to stop rainforest devastation. The rainforests are much more valuable alive than cut or burned, providing a steady supply of medicinal plants, fruits, nuts and oils.
Chris Kilham
We need healthy forests if we want to protect our climate. As the climate changes, forests become more vulnerable to insect outbreaks, droughts and wildfires. Simultaneously, when our forests are destroyed, their carbon is released back into the atmosphere, further impacting climate change. It's a horrifying one-two punch.
Most people know that forests are the lungs of our planet, literally playing a critical role in every breath we take. And that they're also home to incredible animals like the orangutan and elephant, which will go extinct if we keep cutting down their forests.
Congo has vast stands of biologically important forests as well as remote areas still waiting to be explored, yet we have very few botanists. I'm working to expand training for young students and inspire a new generation to make discoveries, spread the word about conservation, and increase protected areas throughout our country.
Votes are like trees, if you are trying to build a forest. If you have more trees than you have forests, then at that point the pollsters will probably say you will win.
Endangered forests are being slaughtered for toilet paper.
It was only after a while, after photographing mines and clear-cutting of forests in Maine, that I realized I was looking at the components of photography itself. Photography uses paper made from trees, water, metals, and chemistry. In a way, I was looking at all these things that feed into photography.
As a spiritual person, nature for me has always been a healing place. Going back all the way to my childhood on the farm, the fields and forests were places of adventure and self-discovery. Animals were companions and friends, and the world moved at a slower, more rational pace than the bustling cities where I'd resided my adult life.
Turkey Hollow is a small country town in Sullivan County, a remote region of the Catskill Mountains. Surrounded by forests, it counts 10 full-time residents, has no mail service, and no cell phone reception. However, what it lacks in amenities, it compensates for in sheer natural wonder.
Most Americans know nothing about the African forest, and it seems to them a very scary, spooky dangerous place. I've spent a lot of time in the forests of central Africa. I know they're beautiful places that contain a lot of different kinds of creatures, including some that carry Ebola.
Too often, governments are quick to use excessive force and even pervert the course of justice to keep oil and gas flowing, forests logged, wild rivers dammed and minerals extracted. As the Global Witness study reveals, citizens are often killed, too - especially if they're poor and indigenous.
Humans are an infant species, a mere 150,000 years old. But, armed with a massive brain, we've not only survived, we've used our wits to adapt to and flourish in habitats as varied as deserts, Arctic tundra, tropical rainforests, wetlands and high mountain ranges.
We're dabbling in eugenics all the time, breeding ideal crops to replace less aesthetic or nutritious or hardy varieties; leveling forests to graze cattle or erect shopping malls and condos; planting groves of a few familiar trees that homeowners and industries prefer.
Both the United States and the world economy have already reached - and surpassed - their sustainable physical limits. Ground water is being drawn down, soils eroded, forests cut faster than they grow, fish caught faster than they reproduce, non-renewable fossil fuels burnt without developing substitutes.
Calculating how much carbon is absorbed by which forests and farms is a tricky task, especially when politicians do it.
We know it is impossible to go on finding, moving and wasting oil, leveling forests, paving land, dumping poisons, and multiplying our numbers. A new way of life, a new set of thoughts must be found.
The historical circumstance of interest is that the tropical rain forests have persisted over broad parts of the continents since their origins as stronghold of the flowering plants 150 million years ago.
We don't need to clear the 4 to 6 percent of the Earth's surface remaining in tropical rain forests, with most of the animal and plant species living there.
And the beautiful open spaces, the forests of Pennsylvania, the recreational uses that come from having these green open spaces and forests, they contribute dramatically to the level of our tourism, dramatically.
One of the things that people don't realize is that that natural beauty, those recreational forests, they have an economic development impact for the state as well.
I'm obsessed with the countryside: woods, forests, fields, lakes, mountains. I'm really into folk music and folklore. But more so I'm into electronic music. I'm into bands that have both aspects, like Boards of Canada is a perfect example. You could listen to that type of music running through a woods. It's kind of what I wanted to achieve.
Except on their southern borders the great northern forests are not good as a permanent home for man.
Nevertheless most of the evergreen forests of the north must always remain the home of wild animals and trappers, a backward region in which it is easy for a great fur company to maintain a practical monopoly.
I dream of diving in two places where I have not been yet. One is Antarctica, because of its crystal clear waters and amazing fauna, in addition to the ice cathedrals. The other is the Arctic, where I'd like to see the northernmost kelp forests.
The great outdoors is a theme with me; a walking holiday in Scotland is perfect - Culloden and the forests of Aviemore are both favourites.
Pollution from human activities is changing the Earth's climate. We see the damage that a disrupted climate can do: on our coasts, our farms, forests, mountains, and cities. Those impacts will grow more severe unless we start reducing global warming pollution now.
Mangroves, salt marshes and sea grass lock away carbon at up to five times the rate of tropical forests.
The San Gabriel Mountains rise like a rampart at the edge of the city, safeguarding more than 500,000 acres of mature forests, mountain streams, dramatic waterfalls, and towering peaks that reach over 9,000 feet. These untamed places attract bighorn sheep, mountain lions, and other threatened or endangered species.
Healthy forests and wetlands stand sentry against the dangers of climate change, absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and locking it away in plants, root systems and soil.
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.
In Africa, we have the bush meat trade, which means that, on a very large scale, animals are being killed in the forests and sold in the cities as a luxury food.
