FORESTS LIFE

 Forests have been vitally important to humans throughout our history. In many religions of our prehistoric ancestors are linked to trees and the importance of forests and trees themselves lives on in ancient customs. Belief in a ‘Tree of Life’ which links heaven, earth and the underworld is a very ancient one and this symbol appears in myths from the Arctic to Australia.

Throughout history people have relied on trees for fuel, tools and building materials. The societies of Mycenae and Minoan Crete which existed between 4,500 and 3,200 year ago used 120 pine trees to smelt every ingot of bronze. However, in the fourth century BC the Greek philosopher Plato was already writing about the deforested hills around Athens, noting that what now remains is like the skeleton of a sick man. After cutting down most of the forests neat Rome the Romans were forced to expand their empire in order to secure vital supplies of wood.

War had a particularly severe effect on the forests of Europe in the Middle Ages and later. For example, more that a quarter of a million trees were cut down to build the Christian and Turkish fleets that fought at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571. By the eighteenth century, it took 2,000 large trees to make a single warship.

FOREST PEOPLE  

More than 140 million people live in or around forests and rely directly on them. For example, half the world’s population uses wood as a fuel for cooking and heating. Whilst an increasing proportion of the people who now live in forests are relative new comers, around 1-2.5 million indigenous people have been living in them for many thousands of years.

A NENETS MAKES A SLED

One of the native peoples in northern Siberia are a group of reindeer herders known as the Nantes. Each spring they migrate 1,000 kilometers with their reindeer herds to the summer pastures in the north of the Yamal peninsula. They head south each autumn to over winter in the forests just south of the Arctic Circle. Each group of herders is made up of several families and up to 4,000 reindeer.

The Nantes makes their sleds in a way that has changed little over the last thousand years. They use larch wood from the Siberian forest known as the taiga. It takes several days to make each sled, which usually requires wood from three larch trees. The runners are made by steaming and gently bending them into shape over heat. The whole construction is held together by wooden pegs.      

 NON-TIMBER FOREST PRODUCTS

Forests are often given a value in terms of the timber they can produce but wood is only one of many forest products. The range of non timber forest products is truly vast and includes foods, fibers, building materials, fuel, medicinal and aromatic plants, gums and latexes. Forest peoples around the world have used their forests, resources for countless practical purposes from beautiful clothing made from bark to powerful medicines to cure fevers.             
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