Previous research identified three important issues of relevance to forest people's roles in sustainable forest management which the authors address here: the presence of a "conservation ethic", a feeling of closeness to the forest, and a significant forest-culture link. In this paper they examine a method (the Galileo), recently pre-tested for this purpose in West Kalimantan, which they hope can help assess such issues quickly, reliably and in a quantitative manner amenable to use by would-be assessors of various educational and experiential levels. They describe the method, suggest improvements for future tests, and present some of our findings from West Kalimantan. The paper concludes with questions that emerged during the pre-test and others that remain for subsequent research.
