Resolving the trade-off between production and biodiversity conservation in integrated forest management: comparing tree
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Resolving the trade-off between production and biodiversity conservation in integrated forest management: comparing tree selection practices of foresters and conservationists Hannes Cosyns1 • Bettina Joa2 • Ronja Mikoleit3 • Frank Krumm1 Andreas Schuck2 • Georg Winkel2 • Tobias Schulz1
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Received: 23 July 2019 / Revised: 2 September 2020 / Accepted: 3 September 2020 The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Integrating nature conservation effectively in forests managed for timber production implies reconciling a trade-off between ecological and economic objectives. In continuous cover forest management, this culminates in decisions about tree harvesting (or retention) determining both the prevalence of tree-related microhabitats in the forest and the economic viability of timber management. Applying an innovative mixed methods approach, we compare conservationists and foresters performing a tree selection exercise. We assess the outcomes of their forest management decisions quantitatively and explore their strategies and the underlying reasoning based on qualitative data. Our findings show that particularly the habitat trees differ greatly between the two groups: while conservationists retained almost exclusively large oaks at often high opportunity costs, foresters retained a notable number of smaller-diameter hornbeams. These differences are related to a different perception of opportunity costs of retention by both groups, as well as because they do not agree about how to value current tree-related microhabitats and their projection into the future. Such diverging patterns of reasoning imply incompatible interpretations of what constitutes a habitat tree. Our results indicate that it is important to apply benchmarks for evaluating ecological goals as well as to increase foresters’ and conservationists’ understanding about the motivations and restrictions of the respective counterpart. Our study points out a significant potential for (mutual) learning, and illustrates the complementarity of quantitative and qualitative research methods to examine tree selection behaviour. Keywords Habitat trees Marteloscope Tree-related microhabitats Mixed methods Economy-ecology trade-off Integrated nature conservation Opportunity costs
Communicated by Daniel Sanchez Mata. This article belongs to the Topical Collection: Forest and plantation biodiversity. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-02002046-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. Extended author information available on the last page of the article
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Biodiversity and Conservation
Introduction Integrating biodiversity conservation measures in forests managed for commodity production is crucial to reach biodiversity conservation goals (Gustafsson et al. 2012). In forests managed for timber production, which typically lack structural elements relating to old-growth phases and considerable amounts of deadw
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