Successful governance of forest resources has a political, economic, and social dimension. We operationalize the social dimension of forest governance as trust. After theoretically linking trust and the use forest resources, we present a cross-country comparison of the rates of deforestation. The analysis finds a robust association between trust and deforestation while controlling for other theoretically relevant factors governing forest use, including democracy and economic development. Our results further illustrate how social capital, in this case trust, explains how well society manages its common-pool resources. Since trust arises within voluntary associations and through participation in collective action, one of the policy implications is for national and subnational governments to enable and encourage the formation of groups devoted to forest governance, as well increasing opportunities to participate in shared governance of forests.