Abstract: In order to understand deeply about the effects of carrying out forest tourism for local residents in Hunan province and shows of the characteristics of the people''s livelihood. This paper selects villages locating in or around Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, Dawei Mountain National Forest Park and Mangshan National Forest Park as the research object. The paper collected relevant data from August 20th to 25th of 2013 by means of questionnaire survey and interview . The results were following: (1)In the forest tourism area, the structure of household is stable in which the labors are strong and well healthy and lack of religious belief. Meanwhile their education was much lower, which led to narrow channels of employment.(2)The income are positive correlation significantly with the local tourism income and the per capital consumption is higher than the average level of rural residents in Hunan Province in the same period.(3) The social security cause is more perfect and the infrastructure is obviously improved, but the mass entertainments and fitness facilities are deficiency; (4) Ecological and social environment in part of forest tourism areas was destroyed and social unrest increased, but the effective use of resources has increased.