Background: A review of the international Montréal Process Criteria and Indicators (MP C&I) sustainable forests reporting framework required member countries to benchmark the Indicators against locally held forest values. Children constitute an important subgroup of the local stakeholders in forests: they may respond to forested environments in different ways and may hold values which are unique to their age group. This study reports on the values school children attributed to their local forests, across three New Zealand regions, and details the agreement of these values to the Montréal Process C&I, a values framework developed by international forestry experts.