Representativeness and Efficiency of Bird and Insect Conservation in Norwegian Boreal Forest Reserves

Abstract

I quantified local species richness of birds in different forest types and of beetles in spruce forests at different altitudes. In both cases I quantified timber production as a measure of land acquisition cost and used the ratio between the species richness and timber production as a measure of conservation cost‐efficiency. I found a positive correlation between timber production and local species richness of birds as well as beetles, indicating that the forests most valuable for forestry are also the ones most valuable for biodiversity conservation. I used different selection procedures for combining sites in a reserve network to find the minimum set of sites that included all vulnerable species. The minimum set of sites for birds was 30% spruce forest, 30% pine forest, and 40% broad‐leaved forest (the three main forest types). The minimum set of sites for the beetles was uniformly distributed along the altitudinal gradient. Both minimum sets were most cost‐efficient for species conservation. I suggest that equal coverage of different productivity classes is more efficient for optimizing biodiversity conservation than over‐representing low productivity sites. Less than 1% of Norwegian boreal forests have been protected as nature reserves. The reserve network is fairly representative with respect to altitude, but it is seriously skewed toward low productivity sites. The current network is suboptimal with respect to forest type representativeness, species protection, and cost‐efficiency. This is a result of an inefficient strategy of selecting reserve sites and an unfortunate combination of selection criteria.