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.

We have serious challenges regarding climate change, unsustainable use of natural resources, water scarcity, loss of biodiversity, forests and farmland. Not to mention the huge inequality still prevailing in several parts of the planet.

Climate change and air pollution know no borders, and antibiotics resistance respects no boundaries. Bacteria from Africa can make people in America sick. The burning of Indonesian forests can keep Asia gasping for breath.

Climate change is the greatest threat to humanity, perhaps ever. Global temperatures are rising at an unprecedented rate, causing drought and forest fires and impacting human health.

If we choose to walk into a forest where a tiger lives, we are taking a chance. If we swim in a river where crocodiles live, we are taking a chance. If we visit the desert or climb a mountain or enter a swamp where snakes have managed to survive, we are taking a chance.

When cattle ranchers clear rain forests to raise beef to sell to fast-food chains that make hamburgers to sell to Americans, who have the highest rate of heart disease in the world (and spend the most money per GNP on health care), we can say easily that business is no longer developing the world. We have become its predator.

Managing forests, rivers, grasslands, and coral reefs in sustainable ways makes them more resilient and increases their ability to absorb greenhouse gases, which is good for business.

You can't stay in your corner of the forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.

The forests of America, however slighted by man, must have been a great delight to God; for they were the best he ever planted. The whole continent was a garden, and from the beginning, it seemed to be favored above all the other wild parks and gardens of the globe.

The coniferous forests of the Yosemite Park, and of the Sierra in general, surpass all others of their kind in America, or indeed the world, not only in the size and beauty of the trees, but in the number of species assembled together, and the grandeur of the mountains they are growing on.

The more I see of deer, the more I admire them as mountaineers. They make their way into the heart of the roughest solitudes with smooth reserve of strength, through dense belts of brush and forest encumbered with fallen trees and boulder piles, across canons, roaring streams, and snow-fields, ever showing forth beauty and courage.

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.

It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men's hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit.

During 1989, my mother, who was exceedingly good at finding these free programs - you know, we were on welfare, just trying to get through - but she would find these amazing programs. She sent me to the Soviet Union at the age of 12 to go study in the forest of then-Leningrad with 50 other Soviet kids.

When you write a book, you spend day after day scanning and identifying the trees. When you're done, you have to step back and look at the forest.

"Find consolation in comparing your sadness to the misery of a tree from the environmental disasters like deforestation

"Here's one of the things I learned that morning: if you cross a line and nothing happens, the line loses meaning. It's like that old riddle about a tree falling in a forest, and whether it makes a sound if there's no one around to hear it.

Introspective souls are often tormented by their passionate visions. This is because visionaries see what shall be and wake up to what is. However, if you couldn't see a glimpse of the city lights while stranded in the forest, how would you ever know to walk in that direction? Sometimes, your vision can't be put into action, until you gather the learning experiences, along your journey first.

Your thoughts become more pleasant in the dawn of transparency as they sink their coffins into the void of irrelevancy to bury their dead in the ground of your mentality as the optimistic tree branches to fertility to nurture the forest where spring and fall move rapidly to embrace the whole picture of happenings happily with the revelation that all the pieces fit perfectly in the design of the Master Who created destiny.

When I go into the forest, I don't go there expecting to see any animal. I go there just to enjoy the wilderness. Any picture I get is a bonus.

He had had a severe shock some weeks earlier, when, having narrowly failed to capture a large grey-brown hare for his dinner, it had stopped at the edge of the forest, looked at him with disdain, and said, 'Well, I hope you're proud of yourself, that's all,' and had scampered off into the long grass

Nature is harsh. It doesn't give crowns to those who create the best but to the ones who can destroy the most. Beavers can build dams as much as they want, but bears will always rule the forest.

A single tree is a forest of one.

The day I no longer walk through the forest with wonder, is the day I no longer belong to this earth.