Abstract
The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment stresses that it is possible to manage ecosystems so as to strengthen their capacity to provide a range of goods and services. In reality, the delivery of ecosystem services reflects policy and delivery mechanisms, the environment, and the objectives of landowners and managers. Amid gradual changes to forest policy and more recent periods of austerity, the management of treescapes by locally led groups, such as Community Woodland Groups (CWGs), has become increasingly common. Through document analysis and interviews we explore the objectives and activities of British-based CWGs, and the implications these have for the delivery of ecosystem services. Additionally, we explore CWGs involvement with three types of networks and the ways in which each facilitate CWGs’ establishment, operations and ecosystem service provision. We conclude that, while CWGs are capable of delivering a range of ecosystem services, their focus is typically on: (i) cultural services for the benefit of the local community, and (ii) biodiversity. Since these foci parallel the goods and services emphasised in contemporary forest policy agendas, it is apparent that CWGs represent a promising model for woodland management. However, to realise their potential and confront management challenges, CWGs often rely on access to advice, labour, equipment and funding from across multiple networks.
Highlights
While factors, such as a Community Woodland Groups (CWGs)’s lifespan and the amount of documentation available for coding, contribute to the variation in the respective number of ecosystem service references, consideration of the proportional share clearly demonstrates the importance of cultural ecosystem services to all of the CWGs featured (Figure 1)
While large-scale community forestry represented in international studies tends to strive for livelihood benefits, this research reaffirms that the aims of Britain’s CWGs appear more commonly related to protection of land for environmental, biodiversity and public amenity value [27], i.e., supporting and cultural services
Given that such benefits are increasingly emphasised in forest policy agendas [70], it is clear that from a policy perspective at least, CWGs represent a promising model for ecosystem service delivery
Summary
German-led productivist and industrial notions of forestry—typified by sharp, linear boundaries, even-aged monocultural forests and sustained yield—had, in many parts, already given way to new notions acknowledging a larger and more diverse range of potential benefits. Terms, such as post-industrial forestry, new forestry, holistic forestry, kinder and gentler forestry, sustainable forestry, multi-value forest management, multi-resource forest management, and forest ecosystem management [3,4,5] have all been used to reflect a growing emphasis on the provision of ‘an optimum mix of human-valued products and services’ [6]
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