Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) has become the guiding paradigm for forestry around the world, but all too often it is not clearly defined. While I accept that SFM is more than sustained yield timber management, I worry about the consequences for nature of broad interpretations of “sustainability” that allow exchanges of natural for other sorts of capital (i.e., built, financial, social, and human). Elsevier’s JOURNAL OF SUSTAINABLE MINING is a case-in-point. I take a nature lover’s approach to reclaiming the concept of sustainability, and explore its application in the context of forested land-uses in the world’s tropics.