Rainforest Relief works to end the loss of the world’s tropical and temperate rainforests and protect their human and non-human inhabitants by reducing demand for the products of rainforest logging, mining and agricultural conversion, through education, advocacy, research and action.


The destruction of rainforests is a highly complex reality driven by human desires and needs, and thus must be addressed from a number of directions.

While there are dozens of local, national and international groups working with local people in rainforest areas to find alternative ways of making a living, there are only a handful that are addressing the other end of the equation — the demand that is driving the extractive industries responsible for precipitating the destruction.

This is the job we have taken on. Rainforest Relief is focused on the demand side of the rainforest-destruction equation. There are two front lines in the battle to spare the rainforests: one is between the farmer or logger and the trees, the other is between the consumer and the store shelf.

Demand and destruction: two sides of the same coin. Without the demand, loggers wouldn’t get paid for mahogany. Without the logging, there would be no mahogany on the market to excite the consumer/retailer.

Since Rainforest Relief’s founding we have understood that the part of the problem that most needs addressing here in the US is the overconsumption of materials and products by the people in industrialized nations.

While economists will argue that consumption is good for everyone, filling coffers both here and there, the reality is that all of our ‘stuff’ as well as all the energy it takes to make, transport and package it, is made from the conversion of Earth’s ecosystems: trees, soil, air, water, minerals, wildlife and other elements. This conversion is the problem and has been for thousands of years.

So Rainforest Relief works to highlight the overconsumption of materials and products, particularly those that are derived from the conversion of rainforests. We do this through direct education in schools and to civic groups, as well as direct communication with those who are either knowingly or unwittingly using products that are fueling the destruction of rainforests.

Often our work involves contacting a city administrator in a town that’s about to use tropical hardwoods for a boardwalk or waterfront renovation, or getting in touch with officers of a company that’s using or selling rainforest wood or other destructive products.

This initial conversation can take us in vastly different directions, depending on the attitude and awareness of those to whom we're speaking. We can either move towards collaboration in finding alternatives, or we can move towards opposition and a campaign to generate public outrage.

We’ve done both, but we always prefer to work with companies and municipalities, rather than oppose them. While they have surely ‘picked the fight’ by using or planning to use products ripped from the rainforests, often this is without malice and awareness. We always hope first to educate and collaborate. But often campaigns are necessary and we move forward based on strategic planning and our available resources.

We have been highly successful with the campaigns we’ve chosen. On the other hand, we are always short of the funds and staff needed to complete the enormous task at hand — nothing short of sustainable consumption. It’s a never-ending job and a final success that will only come about when more and more of us come to the understanding that we do not own Earth but instead are of Earth. Now that we know we can convert the entire planet to stuff for our entertainment and convenience, we have the responsibility to be enlightened by the ways of Nature. What can we use and what can’t we use? And how much? How can it be reused after use? What happens to it after we’re done with it? Only when we are asking these questions with the awareness of the impact of our consumption on, and from the perspective of, all other life on Earth, will we get the right answers.

Our foraging forebears (and those of our human family that still practice that way of life today) observed their world to a level of knowledge and intimacy that we may never match. But if we are to know what the world can easily and freely give, as opposed to our taking it by force or detriment, then we must seek some of that knowledge. We must observe our world at least to the extent to know how not to destroy it with our every purchase.

The challenge is daunting but it’s one that we can simply ignore. To do so is to continue to doom most of the unique life on Earth to extinction. And to do so is to risk our very existence as a species.

We don’t have all the answers. But we do know that the alternatives we promote, such as recycled plastic lumber, palm wood, bamboo, ForestBananas™, ForestChocolate™ and ForestCoffee™ are orders of magnitude less destructive than the unsustainable rainforest and tropical woods and industrial agricultural products so many are choosing.

While we are all overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task and many of us have been knocked down by the emotional weight of it, we have chosen to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves and each other off, and set ourselves to slowing the greatest biological cataclysm to have occurred on our magnificent planet in the last 65 million years. Won’t you join us?



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