Sustainable Forestry and Biodiversity Conservation

Abstract

The multiple-use forest management model has been flexible, versatile, and useful in accommodating a growing array of forest uses and evolving social values regarding forest conservation and stewardship. The need to protect biological diversity in forest ecosystems presents a difficult challenge to this model, however, due to its importance and to the fact that adequate protection of many threatened or endangered species is not compatible with even moderate levels of resource development. An effective global strategy for biodiversity conservation must consider biodiversity values in temperate forest nations relative to those in tropical and boreal ecosystems, along with the potential of temperate-forest nations to minimize the effects of their own high per-capita demand for wood fiber on the most diverse, globally-significant ecosystems. Developed temperate-forest nations have a dual conservation responsibility to: (a) protect their own globally significant biodiversity hotspots, and (b) minimize externalities by more intensive utilization of productive forest areas with relatively low biodiversity values. Ultimately, the overarching concept of “sustainable forestry” must be inclusive of reserves and intensively managed plantations, as well as forests managed at moderate intensity for a wide variety of goods, services, and values.