WEWeb EcologyWEWeb Ecol.1399-1183Copernicus GmbHGöttingen, Germany10.5194/we-14-61-2014Comment on “Opinion paper: Forest management and biodiversity”:
the role of protected areas is greater than the sum of its number of
speciesMikolášM.martin.ozprales@gmail.comSvobodaM.PouskaV.MorrisseyR. C.https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0665-5935DonatoD. C.KeetonW. S.NagelT. A.PopescuV. D.MüllerJ.BässlerC.KnornJ.RozylowiczL.EnescuC. M.TrotsiukV.JandaP.MrhalováH.MichalováZ.KrummF.KrausD.Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Faculty of
Forestry and Wood Sciences, Kamýcká 129, 16521 Praha 6 – Suchdol,
Czech RepublicUniversity of Washington, School of Environmental and
Forest Sciences, Seattle, Washington, USAUniversity of Vermont, Rubenstein School of Environment
and Natural Resources, Aiken Center, 81 Carrigan Drive, Burlington, Vermont
05405, USAUniversity of Ljubljana, Biotechnical Faculty, Vecna Pot
83, 1000 Ljubljana, SloveniaSimon Fraser University, Biological Sciences, 8888
University Drive, Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6, CanadaBavarian Forest National Park, Department of Conservation
and Research, Freyunger Str. 2, 94481 Grafenau, GermanyHumboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Geography Department,
Unter den Linden 6, 10099 Berlin, GermanyUniversity of Bucharest, Centre for Environmental
Research (CCMESI), 1 N. Balcescu Blvd., 010041, Bucharest,
RomaniaUniversity of Agronomic Sciences and Veterinary Medicine
of Bucharest, Faculty of Agriculture, 59 Mărăşti Blvd., 011464,
Bucharest, RomaniaEuropean Forest Institute, Wonnhaldestr. 4, 79100
Freiburg, GermanyM. Mikoláš (martin.ozprales@gmail.com)19December201414161649September201411November20144December2014This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/This article is available from https://we.copernicus.org/articles/14/61/2014/we-14-61-2014.htmlThe full text article is available as a PDF file from https://we.copernicus.org/articles/14/61/2014/we-14-61-2014.pdfIntroduction
In a recent opinion paper, Schulze et al. (2014) compared animal and plant
richness of protected areas with intensively and extensively managed forests
in Germany and in Romania. Schulze et al. hypothesised that “differences in
management practice have contributed to the observed differences in
diversity of central versus southeastern Europe”. The study concludes with
a hypothesis that “clear-felling followed by natural succession may even be
superior to the protection of old-growth forests, regarding biodiversity”.
We wish to continue the dialog on this important topic, and express our
somewhat different perspective on the conclusions and implications of this
particular paper (Schulze et al., 2014). We agree in principal that
emulating natural disturbance regimes and creating openings via
clear-fellings can be one of several management tools to introduce
heterogeneity in otherwise homogenous mid-seral stands that have resulted
from past management (Franklin and Johnson, 2012). However, we believe it is
misleading to compare clear-fellings to protected areas dominated by
old-growth or primary forests using a simplistic measure of biodiversity and
without a landscape perspective on the role of different habitat types
(successional stages) to sustain biodiversity over time and space. We
identify some critical limitations of the original opinion paper and offer
an alternative perspective to the authors' conclusions regarding protected
forests.
We highlight three major issues of the opinion paper of Schulze et al. (2014):
limited scope, an incomplete conceptual framework, and conjectural
interpretations unsupported by solid data.
Limited scope
The suggestion that clear-felling followed by natural succession (“cut and
leave”) is superior to old-growth protection for biodiversity is far too
elementary and unnecessarily simplifies the concept of biodiversity.
Commercial forest management (including extensive and intensive types) often
results in even-aged stands that lack many critical structural habitat
elements (e.g. snags, coarse woody debris, vertically complex canopies),
while most species in European forests are adapted to past natural
disturbance regimes characterized by a mosaic of different successional
stages and structural complexity across varying spatial scales (Nilsson and
Ericson, 1997). Through ecological succession, species composition of an
area may change over time. Different species depend on different
successional stages, including old growth (structurally complex forests
dominated by large old trees) as well as structurally complex early seral
stands (those following severe canopy-opening disturbances) (e.g. Halme et
al., 2013; Lehnert et al., 2013; Sippola, 2001; Swanson et al., 2014). This
landscape-scale gamma diversity, and the continuity of habitats over broad
scales, is equally relevant as the stand-scale differences in alpha
diversity that Schulze et al. (2014) reported. Dead wood and other habitat
features are often found in old-growth conditions (e.g. Bobiec, 1998;
Standovár et al., 2006), and their presence across space and time is a
precondition for many species (Müller et al., 2007). These types of
stands, often found only in protected or inaccessible areas, constitute a
tiny fraction of the contemporary landscape in central and southeastern
Europe (Parviainen et al., 2000; Wesołowski, 2005; Schulze et al., 2009).
Consequently, they play a critical conservation role for many species,
ecosystem services, and carbon storage (Knohl et al., 2009; Luyssaert et
al., 2008). The opinion paper did not assess the role of protected or
wilderness areas beyond a select group of species found. Nor did it consider
protected area value in the landscape context of the recent management
practices discussed, past forest protection differences, and overall forest
and land use. Schulze et al. (2009) did not account for possible extinction debt
(see e.g. Berglund and Jonsson, 2005) associated with different forest use
history. In Germany, the forests have been managed more intensively for
centuries compared to Romania, and the missing species are likely the result
of the slow erosion of biodiversity due to the high level of habitat
alteration through intensive management. De-emphasizing the well-established
role of protected areas is likely to have adverse effects on primary forest
remnants and some taxa (e.g. Nordén et al., 2013; Penttilä et al.,
2004; Stokland and Larsson, 2011; Lesica et al., 1991; Niemelä et al.,
1993).
Incomplete conceptual framework
Focusing only on species richness of selected groups, such as trees and
herbaceous plants, is not a comprehensive or robust measure to compare
different forest management strategies with respect to biodiversity
(e.g. Müller et al., 2007; Cadotte et al., 2010; Mouillot et al.,
2013). Although there may be a greater number of early seral species in
clear cuts in the region, they are not truly at risk in the majority of
contemporary landscapes dominated by early successional habitats associated
with recent forest management (Knorn et al., 2012a, b). From a conservation
standpoint, a taxa that is abundant in clear-felling settings (e.g.
Calamagrostis spp.) is clearly not equivalent to a rare species
(e.g. Linnaea borealis L.) found almost
exclusively in protected areas of old forests. Moreover, while such basic
measures of species richness can have value, they should virtually always be
complemented by measures of evenness and abundance to paint a more complete
picture of community response (e.g. Donato et al., 2009).
Biodiversity conservation and planning rely on standards of species'
vulnerability and irreplaceability, neither of which is conveyed in the
analysis of species richness of a limited subset of taxa. The study is
focused mainly on trees and herbaceous plants, and several taxonomic groups
with high conservation value (e.g. fungi, lichens, saproxylic beetles) were
not considered. For decision making, a more comprehensive ranking of
suitable indicators (e.g. umbrella species, sensitive species, habitat
association or functional guilds, species assemblages, and habitat types) is
needed (Nilsson and Ericson, 1997; Müller et al., 2007); however, it
should be noted that even rare species may be poor umbrella species because
their distributions are too highly restricted (Fleishman et al., 2000).
Conjectural interpretations unsupported by solid data
The results presented in the opinion paper are based on simplistic, vague
data and analysis and are without consideration of spatial relationships among
sites and the implications for biodiversity. The study is based on an
extensive but poorly interconnected assemblage of data, which seem to be
more suitable for the comparison of the two management types (extensive versus
intensive); the comparison of managed and protected types had a marginal
focus. The paper provides no information regarding the number of plots in
different types of forests; only Table 1 shows a review with sources of
data, and it is partially reliant on personal communications with the lead
author of the paper. Some of the data treatments are incomprehensible, with
an apparent lack of standardization leading to illogical findings. For
example, a difference between 10 and 46 bird species per unit area virtually
never occurs in temperate forests, and data for the carabids apparently were
not standardized (e.g. Müller 2005). The paper is not statistically
rigorous and the analysis is effectively not reproducible (this indicates a
problem with opinion papers in general, rather than only this paper in
particular). Reproducibility of the results and a higher level of
transparency of the data might be possible by providing supplementary
material including species and structural variables. For example, the
numbers of species and volume of wood in plots of the same sizes perhaps
could be used to statistically evaluate differences between the two
regions. A statement such as “the coarse woody debris was not higher in
protected than in managed forests in Romania” is not supported by any
quantitative test, and it does not seem to be true if comparing deciduous
forests in the paper's Table 1. Furthermore, it is not consistent with a
well-established body of literature from similar temperate regions around
the world (Burrascano et al., 2013).
The conclusions of the paper, particularly the speculation about superiority of
clear-felling over the protection of old-growth stands, are not well
connected to or supported by the data presented.
Conclusion
While we are inclined to agree with the paper's suggestion that
“…forest protection per se does not yet ensure the maintenance
of species”, we suggest that protected forests represent a critical
complement to sustainable integrative forestry practices employed on the
majority of landscapes (Keeton, 2007; Bollmann and Braunisch, 2013). The
Carpathian Mountains in Romania encompass the largest remaining areas of
natural and old-growth forests in central Europe (Veen et al., 2010), and
are recognized by UNESCO and other international organizations as globally
significant due to their imperilled conservation status (Keeton et al.,
2013). There has been a recent trend toward large-scale destruction of
mountain forests by clear-felling, including primeval and other natural
forests (Knorn et al., 2012b) across the whole Carpathian region (European
biodiversity hotspots) over the past few decades (Kuemmerle et al., 2007, 2009; Griffiths et al., 2014); almost no differentiated
forest management approach is applied in protected areas of Romania (Knorn
et al., 2012a). Loss and degradation of habitat is a major reason why many
of Europe's species are threatened or extinct, with shifting patterns of
forest use impacting species populations differentially (Wallenius et al.,
2010). We appreciate the efforts to encourage dialog on this subject by
Schulze et al. (2014). However, unsubstantiated opinions on such critical
topics may encourage or support further destruction of natural areas and
their related functions; hundreds of rigorous peer-reviewed scientific
papers discuss biodiversity, yet it continues to decline (Butchart et al.,
2010). Opinion articles with limited scope, an incomplete conceptual
framework, conjectural interpretations unsupported by solid data and
analysis should not be relied upon for decision-making regarding protection
of old forests in central and eastern Europe. These forests are already
glaringly absent in most areas relative to the evolutionary history and
ecosystems in which many species assemblages evolved, and they are essential
to an overall landscape conservation strategy.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank two reviewers for their comments to help improve the
manuscript. This comment was supported by the Internal Grant Agency (IGA no.
B0114), Faculty of Forestry and Wood Sciences, Czech University of Life
Sciences Prague. Edited by: J. Stadler
Reviewed by: P. Ódor and R. Brandl
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