The Role of Managed Forests in Conserving Biodiversity in North America.

Background/Question/Methods

Forest management may influence biodiversity patterns across multiple spatial scales, ranging from individual trees to landscape scales. A sustainably managed forest landscape contains a variety of forest types of different ages and structure types and may include non-managed stands such as riparian buffers and unique ecological areas that provide value for biodiversity conservation. How biodiversity responds to a given practice will also differ across regions and over time, where land managers must consider and integrate these likely responses into their short- and long-term forest management plans. Decades of biodiversity research and monitoring within actively managed forests improves our understanding of how biodiversity responds to contemporary forest management. Further, federal, provincial, or state regulations, voluntary best management practices, and third-party forest certification programs provide guidance for a land manager and form a sustainable forestry framework. This framework results in strategies to incorporate considerations of forest management effects on ecosystem services while helping the forest sector better understand potential trade-offs and opportunities for synergies relative to managing forests and biodiversity conservation.

Results/Conclusions

This talk will discuss the relevance of scale (individual tree to landscape), differences in how biodiversity responds to forest management among and across three regions in North America, and how forest managers can incorporate biodiversity and other ecosystem services into sustainable forestry. We also outline sector-specific practices and collaborative initiatives which have led to improved forest sustainability on private, working forests across North America.