Options for biodiversity conservation in managed f

Authors: Nobuya Suzuki Deanna H Olson

Publish Date: 2007/06/21

Volume: 16, Issue: 13, Pages: 3895-3917

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Abstract

We examine existing and developing approaches to balance biodiversity conservation and timber production with the changing conservation roles of federal and nonfederal forest land ownerships in the US Pacific Northwest At landscape scales implementation of the reservematrix approach of the federal Northwest Forest Plan in 1994 was followed by proposals of alternative designs to better integrate disturbance regimes or to conserve biodiversity in landscapes of predominantly young forests through active management without reserves At stand scales landowners can improve habitat heterogeneity through a host of conventional and alternative silvicultural techniques There are no state rules that explicitly require biodiversity conservation on nonfederal lands in the region However state forest practices rules require retention of structural legacies to enhance habitat complexity and establishment of riparian management areas to conserve aquatic ecosystems Habitat Conservation Plans HCPs under the US Endangered Species Act provide regulatory incentives for nonfederal landowners to protect threatened and endangered species A statewide programmatic HCP has recently emerged as a multispecies conservation approach on nonfederal lands Among voluntary incentives the Forest Stewardship Council certification comprehensively addresses fundamental elements of biodiversity conservation however its tough conservation requirements may limit its coverage to relatively small land areas Future changes in landscape management strategies on federal lands may occur without coordination with nonfederal landowners because of the differences in regulatory and voluntary incentives between ownerships This raises concerns when potentially reduced protections on federal lands are proposed and the capacity of the remaining landscape to compensate has been degradedWe thank D Clayton R Nauman H Welsh E Reilly S Morey B Devlin and L Ollivier for conservation planning in the Applegate Watershed and E Reilly for help assembling GIS layers that were used in Fig 4 Kathryn Ronnenberg assisted with graphics and editing Funding and support was provided by the Aquatic and Land Interactions Program of the US Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station and Oregon State University

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