A television crew has been at Fuck for Forest's Berlin apartment nearly all weekend shoving microphones into the faces of the organization's growing supporters. Lounging on plush mattresses spread across the floor, over twenty sexy Berliners have gathered for the first meeting of the Fuck for Forest board.

Co-founded by Tommy Hol Ellingsen and Leona Johansson, two horny environmental activists, Fuck for Forest has been in the media spotlight ever since the pair fucked onstage at Norway's largest rock festival and were subsequently taken to court. For them it was just another day on the job-utilizing live sex shows, the occasional spontaneous strip tease, and their online porn site, www.fuckforforest.com, to raise money for the rainforests.

Tommy admits that he both hates and loves the media. Where sex is, the media follows, and it's this very principle that makes Fuck for Forest work so well. As Tommy puts it, "People make way too much out of sex! That's why it's possible to make money for the rainforests."

But for Tommy and Leona, sex is simply a beautiful and natural part of life. It just happens to be sensationalistic enough to be the perfect tool for social change. And for people who enjoy sex and embrace their sexuality, the process can be just as fun as the desired result.

What Fuck for Forest has shown is that sex is not only a valid means of political expression, but it's an effective one as well. What appears to make this concept go beyond the "make love not war" slogans of the sixties is that Fuck for Forest milks the very system it rebels against. They rely on society's fascination with sex in order to funnel money into projects that encourage a reconnection with nature.

Fuck for Forest rides a thin line between the stigmatized porn industry and the "clean" world of environmental activism. In the process they are making a profound statement: porn is an avenue to reconnect with the natural body-and environmental activism can be sexy.

To some degree, Tommy and Leona united from a place of depression and strong discontent with the system. To keep from being depressed, they had to build a project that had its roots in the earth-the one thing every human needs and most take for granted. "Work is our therapy," says Tommy, "if you don't fight, you start to rot from the insides."

The Fuck for Forest project also grew out of Tommy and Leona's spiritual connection with the natural world and shared vision of open sexuality. They believe there is an energy within and around every living thing that contains an intelligence. "Humans have forgotten to use their instincts," Tommy says. Using the recent tsunami in South-East Asia as an example, he continues, "When the wave struck, all the animals had already run away, because they sensed what was coming."

Fuck for Forest is about reconnecting with those instincts. "We have the same philosophy about sex as we have about nature. Humans have a growing distance to the environment, just as they have a growing distance to sexuality and everything else natural," says Tommy.

Tommy and Leona are newcomers to porn-and it shows. The Fuck for Forest website is a mix of digital video and stills, none of which look polished or produced. Most of the movies revolve loosely around an environmental theme and some are almost ridiculously humorous. All of the models volunteer their time, and relationships are built on personal connections that Leona and Tommy foster. Shoots are spontaneous, which leaves room for experimentation and the option for an actor to simply stop.

According to Tommy, "This is a special way of making porn. Fuck for Forest is more real than any other site," and that's precisely the point: "We believe in keeping it funny-reality is too depressing, and the creativity goes away if there is no fun."

The question is, does it attract visitors and bring in the cash? The answer is yes. Tommy and Leona believe that in fact they are tapping into a "new public," people who recognize the message and the expression behind the porn itself. Some of the site's visitors are primarily interested in porn and were drawn to the latest concept. Some people support the environmental cause and were secondarily interested in the sex. And some people, says Tommy, "think we're weird, so they wanted to check it out, out of curiosity ... We've got a really wide audience."

Like their porn, Tommy and Leona are not airbrushed. "I want to be an environmental hero more than a porn star," says Tommy. This candid nature translates into their professional and personal lives, if one could even make a distinction. Acknowledging the integration of life, work, sexuality, and nature means Tommy and Leona work 24 hours a day and bring openness, experimentation, humor, and fallibility to every project.

Though they hate to be in front of the computer screen all day or on the phone with a credit card company, both Tommy and Leona agree that making the porn itself is always fun and doesn't take away from their personal sexual life. It is just another aspect of it.

Neither Tommy nor Leona were quick to define their sexuality by category, but expressed that they were open to both genders and were able to learn through experimentation, both within and outside of the Fuck for Forest project. The movies allow for yet another place to play.

Like any couple, Tommy and Leona negotiate jealousy and respect. Tommy says, "I can get jealous but I don't think I can be happy being in a relationship where you want to own someone. A lot of things go on behind the back of the other person when [a relationship] is not open. Yes, it can be hard-But fuck! Life is too short! If you don't try out stuff, you don't learn ... the most important thing is not to take yourself too seriously ... I'm not totally sexually free-but I'm learning."

Some of what Tommy and Leona have learned is that a little glimmer of an idea can quickly grow into an enormous project. Besides all the work involved, they are challenged by the fact that many environmental organizations won't "dirty" their hands with the money Fuck for Forest has raised. The Rainforest Foundation in Norway, for example, was originally involved with the project but pulled out as soon as Tommy and Leona started gaining media attention.

Despite this constant run-in with what Tommy and Leona term "double moralists"-those who arbitrarily stigmatize some actions and not others-the pair isn't interested in inhibiting the work of other environmental organizations, even those that have especially conservative stakeholders.

This means Tommy and Leona have had to work harder to build an independent scheme to donate the money effectively. They are currently negotiating with several German environmental organizations that may assist them.

Despite the controversy about the idea of fucking for change and the resulting media attention, Fuck for Forest insists they are not using sex to provoke the public.

Says Tommy, "We're not trying to provoke. We think sex is natural. Our goal is to make people see sex as natural and that it's possible to do something good with it ... People feel provoked because of how society feels about sexuality. But we feel provoked by society and how they treat sexuality."

Provocative or not, Fuck for Forest has set entirely new standards for environmental activism and challenged the porn industry to effect change.