The Owner Shapes the Difference — How Ownership Patterns Affect Forest Biodiversity and Conservation
In forest landscapes of Europe and North America, effective conservation strongly depends on motivated landowners who support and recognize its aims, our recent study shows.
Conservation objectives — what should be protected and how? — vary among different forest ecosystems, and so do public and private landowners’ management targets and activities. These are decisive not only for forest stand structures, but also for biodiversity patterns and conservation efficiency worldwide. This is particularly true for mixed-ownership landscapes, where certain ownership patterns are major drivers of forest habitat conditions and conservation values.
The crucial role of landowners for landscape conservation was already recognized as early as 1864, when the conservation pioneer George Perkins Marsh (1801–1882) stated in his seminal book “Man and Nature”:
“It is evidently a matter of the utmost importance that the public, and especially land owners, be roused to a sense of the dangers to which the indiscriminate clearing of the woods may expose not only future generations, but the very soil itself.”
In a recently published review study, we analyze this important interplay of ownership patterns, biodiversity, and conservation. This is done for past and present temperate forest landscapes of Europe and North America. Mixed-ownership landscapes are the special focus of the analysis.
Links between ownership and habitat types
Our study confirms that publicly and privately owned forests show comparable lines of historical development both in Europe and North America from the mid-18th century onwards. Nevertheless, there is a time shift in the onset of particular developments of about 100 to 150 years. Forest reserves and ancient woodland with long ecological continuity appear to be mainly connected with public ownership. As George Perkins Marsh wrote:
“It has been often proposed that the State should declare the remaining forest the inalienable property of the commonwealth (…). It is desirable that some large and easily accessible region of American soil should remain, as far as possible, in its primitive condition, at once a museum for the instruction of the student, a garden for the recreation of the lover of nature, and an asylum where indigenous tree (…), and ftish and fowl and four-footed beast, may dwell and perpetuate their kind (…).” (Man and Nature, 1864)
Other forest types and habitats of conservation concern are primarily linked to private ownership. This applies for instance to diverse young forests in western North America. Remnants of historical forest management practices, such as coppicing, show a close connection to small-scale private or commonly owned forests in Europe and are typically scant in public forests.
For these reasons, a more diverse mosaic of habitats has developed in many mixed-ownership landscapes than would be the case with just one ownership type. This is particularly true for a great variety of forest habitats that are linked with cultural landscapes, which are shaped by a diversity of human activities.
Thus, ownership patterns have a strong influence on how forest landscapes are managed. Our review study, however, revealed the relative scarcity of studies analyzing the relationships between ownership and biodiversity patterns in mixed-ownership landscapes. Therefore we encourage researchers to conduct further studies on this topic in a variety of regions, also in consideration of common, tribal, or indigenous forest ownership.
Integrative conservation management for mixed-ownership forest landscapes
When it comes to landscapes with mixed ownership patterns, we emphasize that ecosystem management should recognize and work across the boundaries of different ownership types, in order to guarantee effective conservation schemes. Such far-sighted conservation planning at the landscape scale requires integrative landscape management and should, thus, consider biodiversity and both social-ecological and economic aspects across ownership types. Most particularly, integrative forest management must take those conservation values into account that are specific for certain ownership types. Uniform management guidelines across ownership types should be avoided — they would result in both landscape homogenization and habitat loss.
We are convinced that further studies are needed to develop appropriate novel forestry management approaches for mixed-ownership landscapes. This is especially true in view of new forest owner types and climate change effects.
Full study: Mölder, A., Tiebel, M. & Plieninger, T. (2021): On the interplay of ownership patterns, biodiversity, and conservation in past and present temperate forest landscapes of Europe and North America. Current Forestry Reports 7: 195–213. DOI: 10.1007/s40725–021–00143-w
The KLEIBER project
The project “Small private forests: conservation through resource use (KLEIBER)” is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) through the Agency of Renewable Resources (FNR) within the funding program “Renewable Resources” and according to a decision of the German Parliament (FKZ 22001218 and 22023218).
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