Introduction

The introduction discusses how historians have addressed the Anthropocene epoch and outlines the methodologies that various researchers have proposed. I posit that there are two paradoxes that historians need to address when it comes to forests. The first is that there is nothing new about direct and indirect human intervention changing the conditions in which other species have to live. Studies in ethno-biology, anthropology, and environmental history have demonstrated that human communities and individuals have been altering their environment for a very long time. The second is that we see forests both as the major victim of environmental damage and as a potential saviour, a carbon-dioxide processing machine.