He decided that he could best minimise damage to nature by changing the views of the city folk. He got empowered, for example, by a greater spirit of nature whilst he was trying to persuade the lumberjacks outside the city to plant new trees to replace the ones they took, and to concentrate on deadwood, because this way the forest would remain to serve their needs, the needs of their children, and the needs of the wilds.

Keep at it as they were, and it would serve them for only a short time, and no one else.

That's just one example of the stuff he was doing. His involvement in tribs was basically because he believed that if the people of the city were to ever co-exist with nature, they needed to be free of attack by those claiming to serve nature etc.