Many poor people who live in or near forests may actually welcome the opportunity to farm on deforested land and bureaucrats in distant capitals may think that unsustainable and low-revenue-yielding forest operations are politically preferable to what they perceive as expensive alternatives.

ECONOMIST: Conflict of opinion

Bart Nunnelly has written several books on the mythical creatures that he believes live in the Kentucky forests.

BBC: On the trail with Bigfoot-hunters

Several hundred million of the world's poorest people live in and around forests.

ECONOMIST: Local difficulties

The notorious spotted owl, which has caused several presidents grief, does not live only in old-growth forests, as was once thought.

ECONOMIST: Wild-life conservation: Landscape or animals first? | The

There are about 600 pandas left in the wild: more than half the bamboo forests where they live have disappeared in the last 30 years.

BBC: NEWS | Science/Nature | UN alert on threat to wild bamboo

"Much of the world's population in North America, Europe, most of China and large portions of Russia live near temperate forests, so what happens in these forests has global importance, " said Jerry Franklin, a professor of forest resources at the University of Washington whose work was instrumental in maintaining the research plots.

CNN: Global warming threatens forests, study says

The World Wide Fund for Nature says a third of the world's forests are under serious threat from climate change -- with dire implications for the species that live in them.

BBC: Special Report