Consideration of the landscape by the forestry services in charge of private forests - Example of a continuing education policy

Abstract

Why do we have to maintain biodiversity in forest ecosystems and how can we do it ? How can we convert general principles of conservation into technical advice without falling into the trap of theoretical or badly adapted recommendations ? This article tries to answer these questions by giving first the scope of forest biodiversity maintenance. Then, we note that the preservation of biodiversity through management practises is not entirely operational. In order to achieve better efficiency, it is necessary to define specific objectives in accordance with spatial scale and the ecological and economic contexts and to adapt the technical practises to these constraints. We suggest (i) raising the variance of some ecological parameters such as forest disturbance regime and stand composition and (ii) increasing the average of others such as the amount of deadwood and the surface areas covered by early - and late-successional stages. The relevance of these technical choices will be assessed by monitoring the biodiversity. Furthermore, we suggest that our classic forest management should be changed in favour of the American concept of "adaptive management", a more flexible type of management based on close links between research and practice.