The new challenges of sustainable and landscape management of mountain forests

Abstract

After giving priority to intensification, our society now asks for a more qualitative growth. Mountain forest is directly concerned by this change of mentality, which challenges its managers by asking them to integrate ecological and perceptive dimensions to their management concerns. This new long lasting management must reinstall forest into its mountain context by respecting its specificities. It opens original perspectives in the field of upkeep of a minimal environment, of control of natural hazards by forests, of set up of a subnatural forest network and of reinforcement of its biodiversity. Finally, the article offers a number of simple principles for the landscape valorization of a mountain forest whose quality will be a decisive factor of local development. These principles do not challenge in any way the production and protection roles of the forest.