Forest Ecosystem Quotes & Sayings

We are clearcutting virgin forests around the world, and 95 percent of species in the clearcut zone have never been studied. So we clearcut a part of the virgin forest and now part of our ecosystem has been wiped out. Some of it may grow back, and some of it won't. — Horst Rechelbacher

My sense is that the most under-appreciated-and perhaps most under-researched-linkages between forests and food security are the roles that forest-based ecosystem services play in underpinning sustainable agricultural production. Forests regulate hydrological services including the quantity, quality, and timing of water available for irrigation. Forest-based bats and bees pollinate crops. Forests mitigate impacts of climate change and extreme weather events at the landscape scale. — Frances Ford Seymour

Mainstream economists habitually treat asset depletion as income, while ignoring the value of the assets themselves. If the owner of an old-growth forest cuts it and sells the timber, the market may record a drop in the land's monetary value, but otherwise the ecological damage done is regarded as an externality. Irreplaceable biological assets, in this case, have been liquidated; thus the benefit of these assets to future generations is denied. From an ecosystem point of view, an economy that does not heavily tax the extraction of non-renewable resources is like a jobless person rapidly spending an inheritance. — Anonymous

The very idea of "managing" a forest in the first place is oxymoronic, because a forest is an ecosystem that is by definition self-managing. — Bernd Heinrich

Planting nuts requires a vision for a future that goes beyond one's mortal reach. If we envision ourselves as participants in the same grand, complex web of interactions as the forest, then planting acorns is like planting part of ourselves. The morality that comes from such a vision of ecosystem-as-life is a common thread that, if taught and encouraged, could unite all of mankind. — Bernd Heinrich

The real question is whether we help ourselves only to what we need from the forest ecosystem, and - analogous to our treatment of animals - whether we spare the trees unnecessary suffering when we do this. T — Peter Wohlleben

I'm saying that mushrooms are very clever at surveying a landscape and taking a long-term view of the health of the population of the descendent organisms that give rise to the forest, that create the debris fields, that feed the fungi, that help the fungi's own progeny live downstream. They take a very advanced view of ecosystem health and management, trying to increase soil depth, and, by increasing soil depth and the richness of the soil, to increase the carrying capacity of the ecosystem. Higher carrying capacity leads to more biodiversity, more sustainability, more resiliency. — Derrick Jensen

As a yogi, you are an environmentalist because you recognize that the rivers flowing through the valleys and those flowing through your veins are intimately related. The breath of an old-growth forest and your most recent breath are inextricably intertwined. The quality of the soil in which your food is raised is directly connected to the health of your tissues and organs. Your environment is your extended body. You are inseparably interwoven with your ecosystem. — Anonymous

You are like a hunter: your knowledge of every detail of the forest and of the ecosystem as a whole will give you many more options for survival and success. — Robert Greene