Purpose: The purpose of this lesson is to develop an understanding of the role forests play in people’s lives and in the local community.

Overview: Forests are essential to human life, regardless of where one lives. Videos of three activists who worked to protect forests reveal our ethical responsibilities to forests and how we can balance those responsibilities with the need to use forest resources, such as lumber, paper, and non timber products.

Objectives: Students will be able to describe the products (timber and non timber) that are derived from forests.
They will be able to explain what ecosystem services are and how forests provide those services. Finally, students will be able to discuss the tradeoffs inherent in using forest resources while preserving the health of forests.

Key Concepts:
• Forests are valuable because they provide people with lumber, paper, and non timber forest products. They also provide many ecological services, such as water and air purification, soil stabilization, and nutrient cycling.
• The utility of forest resources—and people’s need for the materials provided by forests—sometimes causes people to exploit forests and threaten the species that live in them.
• People must carefully weigh the benefits and drawbacks of using forest resources. We must consider how forests can provide the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

Video Segments:



Colleen McCrory, Canada
Goldman Environmental Prize, North America, 1992
Colleen McCrory realized that the forests that surrounded her since childhood were an essential part of her community, and she felt a responsibility to protect them. She led an impassioned fight to preserve forested land in her native British Columbia. McCrory worked through legal and governmental channels to prevent logging in certain pristine and environmentally important areas, arguing that the ecological and spiritual benefits of having healthy, intact forests outweighed the economic and material benefits that would accrue from harvesting the timber.
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Loir Dingit, Indonesia, 1997
Loir Dingit led an effort to develop sustainable forest management practices among rattan farmers in East Kalimantan, Indonesia. Dingit, chief of the Bentian Dyak tribe, vowed to preserve traditional forestry techniques, and he joined with other tribes to make the voice of the indigenous communities heard. He firmly believes that the best stewards of Indonesia’s unique rain forest ecosystem are the people who were born there and whose grandchildren will inherit the land.
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Rodolfo Montiel Flores, Mexico, 2000
Rodolfo Montiel Flores is a subsistence farmer who organized forest communities to protest logging in the state of Guerrero, Mexico, where lumber companies and local people disagreed over the values of a forest—an ethical clash that resulted in violence and even imprisonment.
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