How to balance forestry and biodiversity conservation? A view across Europe

Various project initiatives over the past years have dealt with the topic of integrative forest management. The question on how to improve the situation for endangered species in multifunctional managed forests (see e.g. INTEGRATE, INTEGRATE+, INFORMAR and oFOREST) is key and these initiatives have thus provided a good overview of the state of biodiversity in European forests. This topic is well established now both at the political level and across Europe, but is also taken up in other parts of the world, mainly in regions which are meeting resource demands of other countries that are/plan to set aside large forest areas. It is thus essential that existing knowledge, experiences and good practices on integrative forest management are made available to all actors in forestry and nature conservation at the implementation level in order to promote biodiversity within the framework of multifunctional forest management. This should not only include information provision but also allow for field visits and training opportunities. In 2020 the publication ”How to balance forestry and biodiversity? – A view across Europe” will be launched. It includes a large number of case study examples on integrative forest management approaches.

A conference discussing these challenges is therefore organized (on 8–10 July 2020) in the border region of Switzerland and Germany in order to discuss those important topics. The conference will be held in the framework of the European Policy Network INTEGRATE and it takes place in the context of the German presidency of the council of the European Union. The Swiss Federal Office for Environment (BAFU), the German Ministry for Food and Agriculture (BMEL), the cantonal ”Amt für Wald beider Basel“, the European Forest Institute (EFI) and the Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL jointly finance this conference.

Conference participants will get a broad overview on options, good practices and lessons learned. It will further allow them to identify common interests and challenges in practice, policy and research, discuss needs for further action while stimulating interaction and field visits within and across country borders.