Editing Forest (section)

==Forests and Pre-Industrial Society==
Besides obviously being a source of lumber, forests are a useful location for a variety of resources; animals to hunt, wild herbs and mushrooms, etc. Sometimes villages would clear brush and dead wood out of the nearest forest (which also reduced fire hazards) and use it as an auxiliary village space. And in extreme circumstances, if your village gets raided your best option for escape would be the forest. That being said, the demand for farmland and lumber tends to outstrip the benefits of having a nearby forest, and forests were just as likely to be home to dangerous predators and bandits, so many of Europe's old forests had been cut down over the centuries, and replaced with smaller pockets of carefully cultivated groves for timber, wicker and fruit trees.

A local noble or king might claim ownership of a nearby forest and declare that no one may hunt or chop down trees in his forest without his express consent, and he would hire rangers to keep poachers out. Now, this wasn't necessarily because the person in question was a conservationist, so much as he just wanted to hunt those wild elk himself. In fact, the first hunting licenses were issued not to limit the amount of hunting, but because the King laid claim to all the good game and you had to pay him for the right to kill and eat them.

Another factor about forests is that they are easy to hide in. It's hard to see things a hundred meters away in the dense foliage and if you don't know where you're going it's easy to get lost. For this reason, [[bandit]]s and other outlaws liked to lurk in forests.