Abstract
Globally, intensive forestry has led to habitat degradation and fragmentation of the forest landscape. Taking Sweden as an example, this development is contradictory to international commitments, EU obligations, and to the fulfillment of the Parliament’s environmental quality objective “Living Forests”, which according to Naturvårdsverket (The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency) will not be achieved in 2020 as stipulated. One important reason for the implementation deficit is the fragmented forestry management. In a forest landscape, felling and other measures are conducted at different times on separate forest stands (often relatively small units) by different operators. Consequently, the authorities take case by case decisions on felling restrictions for conservation purposes. In contrast, conservation biology research indicates a need for a broad geographical and strategical approach in order to, in good time, select the most appropriate habitats for conservation and to provide for a functioning connectivity between different habitats. In line with the EU Commission, we argue that landscape forestry planning could be a useful instrument to achieve ecological functionality in a large area. Landscape planning may also contribute to the fulfilment of Sweden’s climate and energy policy, by indicating forest areas with insignificant conservation values, where intensive forestry may be performed for biomass production etc. Forest owners should be involved in the planning and would, under certain circumstances, be entitled to compensation. As state resources for providing compensation are scarce, an alternative could be to introduce a tax-fund system within the forestry sector. Such a system may open for voluntary agreements between forest owners for the protection of habitats within a large area.
Highlights
Biodiversity in forest ecosystems is under threat worldwide [1]
It may be regarded as rational to make exemptions from some other restrictions in the forest legislation, e.g., regarding fertilization or the use of exotic tree species. Such legal derogations would indicate a substantial shift in Swedish forest policy and require political decisions. Given such a political position, a forest landscape plan would be the core implementation instrument to use in order to select those forest stands, lacking significant conservation values, which can be relieved from certain legal restrictions
Conservation biology research indicates a need for a broad geographical approach to select the most appropriate habitats for conservation and to provide for a functioning connectivity between different habitats
Summary
Biodiversity in forest ecosystems is under threat worldwide [1]. The global community has acknowledged the urgency of the problem and intentions and actions to conserve forest biodiversity have been multilaterally agreed upon through, e.g., the Aichi Biodiversity Targets, and the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. The biodiversity objective is further developed in different non-legal documents, such as the environmental quality objective “Sustainable Forests”, adopted by the Swedish parliament in 1999 [3] This decision recognizes, inter alia, that forests should “offer unique habitats for a variety of animal and plant species”. In order for conservation measures to be both cost efficient and proportionate (with regard to opposite interests), decisions on measures should be based upon adequate information on the specific ecological conditions in a large area Such information may indicate that a forest area should be legally protected, but it may show that other less far-reaching instruments may be used, e.g., voluntary instruments, to ensure connectivity between different habitats. Our geographical focus is Sweden, many of the issues we raise apply to forest landscape planning in general
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