Globally, around 0.78 billion rural people live in close proximity to forests and have been considered “forest-dwelling” and/or “forest dependent”. Forest dependency has so far been mainly studied in material terms, while the non-material relationships to forests have been addressed less frequently. To fill this gap, the general objective of this study is to assess forest-dwelling people’s relationship to their community, their livestock, and their forest landscapes through a relational values and human-nature connectedness lens. Using the Zagros mountains in Iran as a case study, we conducted individual interviews with 35 villagers who live within forest landscapes and that are engaged in pastoral activities. Emerging themes were identified and categorized by qualitative analysis. We found that forest dwellers emphasized a complex array of values that relate to their community, their livestock, and their landscapes. These values included experiential, emotional, cognitive, and philosophical dimensions of human-nature connectedness. Respondents expressed an erosion of values and practices related to community, livestock, and landscapes and articulated very few positive visions for the future of these values and practices. We conclude that participatory processes and tools may be valuable for empowering forest-dwelling people to identify pathways toward a desirable future. We encourage landscape conservation strategies to become socially inclusive by considering people’s deep relational values and their landscape stewardship practices.
