"cut down forest" is correct and usable in written English, especially in a context where you are discussing deforestation or land development.
For example, "Loggers have cut down forests in this area for decades, leaving the land barren and uninhabitable."
The expansion of Bolivia's agricultural frontier has brought Mennonite settlers to the refuge's fringes, where they have cut down forest to plant soybeans and sunflowers.
Dr. Heckadon, who became the nation's first environment minister, said one important step came when leading Panamanian bankers decided to stop financing cattle ranchers who cut down forest for pasture.
The company's plan is to cut down forest to make way for the coalmine, meaning local residents would lose these livelihoods, and the energy produced would be for industry; not people.
The judge, Claudia Wilken of Federal District Court in Oakland, Calif., ruled that the Forest Service had failed to take a hard look at the environmental impacts of changing the rule to make it easier to cut down forest habitat of species like the spotted owl and salmon on 193 million acres of national forests.
There would be no need to cut down forest when there is already degraded land.
Pedro Brancalion, a restoration ecologist at the University of São Paulo in Brazil, says it will be important to make sure that turning pasture back to forest doesn't encourage cattle ranchers to cut down forest elsewhere.
Cutting down forest in favor of palm oil, rubber, coffee, and other 'mono-culture' cash crops which are perceived to provide more regularized, predictable income in a globalized market economy, is another major factor driving habitat loss.
Cutting down forests to make way for ranches releases carbon.
Cutting down forests, on the other hand, might not be the most obvious risk factor when it comes to infectious disease — but it's one that scientists are paying more and more attention to.
We wage wars, cut down forests and unbalance the entire ecosystem in pursuit of our whims.
