There is no doubt that forests provide many essential functions beyond the production of timber. Forests maintain air quality, regulate water runoff, and provide focal points for tourism. For this reason, many city dwellers feel that felling trees is inherently bad. The understanding of forestry and the forest sector among urban residents is so incomplete that it is difficult to convince them that felling trees is a way of replacing inferior forests with better, more productive forests that sequester more CO2. Perhaps the facts have gone unnoticed that mushrooms also grow in young stands, and that wood is our local, renewable resource, providing an opportunity to create a healthy environment through timber construction, furniture, and heat production independent of other countries. Currently, a target is being set that 30% of Europe's territory must be included in protected areas. This opens up vast opportunities for discussion regarding how much of this protected area will consist of forests and what is meant by a protected area within forests. Will Latvia be "outplayed", given that we already see European countries creating their protected areas in northern regions or mountainous areas, where economic activity is already hindered or impossible anyway?