Conservation Theory and Forest Management:
Foundations, Utility, and Research Needs
Principal investigators: Robert J. Mitchell, Lisa A. Schulte, Malcolm L. Hunter, Jr., Jerry F. Franklin, R. Kevin McIntyre,
& Brian J. Palik
Issue At Hand While much has been written describing biodiversity, its global decline, and the need for action, the scientific underpinnings guiding conservation practice have received little attention. What We Hope to Accomplish Our goal is to evaluate ecological concepts that guide the conservation of forest biodiversity in forest planning and management settings. We provide recommendations for how future efforts may enhance both conservation science and its practice.
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How We Go About It We surveyed 10 large-scale forest management plans in the U.S. to establish which ecological concepts are commonly used to guide forest biodiversity conservation. We then reviewed the scientific literature to assess the degree to which these concepts are founded in antecedent ecological theory, the extent to which they have been tested, and the limits of those tests.
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What We Found We found that the examined concepts are extensively employ-ed in forest planning efforts. While most of the concepts re-ceived high utility scores, Coarse Filter was most commonly used, followed closely by Matrix Management and Fine Filter. All concepts have both direct and indirect relationships with foundational eco-logical theories, and have some empirical support based on field tests. Although we document wide use of these concepts, significant constraints hinder further incorporation into forest stewardship. Lack of empirical support at the spatial and tempo-ral scales over which forest management is implemented is predominant among these.
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Funding for this project was provided by the National Council on Science for Sustainable Forestry. For more information, see the following publication, or contact Lisa Schulte (lschulte@iastate.edu) for the final report.
Schulte, L.A., R.J. Mitchell, M.L. Hunter, Jr., J.F. Franklin, R.K. McIntyre, and B.J. Palik. 2006. Evaluating the conceptual tools for forest biodiversity conservation. Forest Ecology and Management 232: 1-11.
