<p>Economic activities such as industrialization, energy consumption, and urbanization have prompted a reassessment of the link between economic growth and environmental quality due to their adverse impacts on ecosystems. This study examines the sustainability of Turkey’s forest ecosystems, measured by the forest load capacity factor (FLCF), using annual data for the period 1995–2021. The autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach is employed to analyze the effects of per capita income and environmental taxes on FLCF. The results reveal that per capita income negatively affects FLCF in the short and long run but turns positive beyond a certain income level, supporting the forest load capacity curve (FLCC) hypothesis for Turkey. Environmental taxes have a slightly positive long-run effect but no significant short-run impact. Robustness checks with FMOLS, DOLS, and CCR confirm these findings, while the Toda–Yamamoto causality test indicates strong unidirectional causality from per capita income and environmental tax to FLCF and from environmental taxes to income. Overall, the study suggests that environmental tax policies should be restructured through effective mechanisms that support sustainable economic growth.</p>