Managing forests under climate change requires adaptation. The adaptive capacity of forest tree populations is huge but not limitless. Integrating evolutionary considerations into adaptive forestry practice will enhance the capacity of managed forests to respond to climate-driven changes. & Aims Focusing on natural regeneration systems, we propose a general framework that can be used in various and complex local situations by forest managers, in combination with their own expertise, to integrate evolutionary considerations into decision making for the emergence of an evolution-oriented forestry. & Methods We develop a simple process-based analytical grid, using few processes and parameters, to analyse the impact of forestry practice on the evolution and evolvability of tree populations. & Results We review qualitative and, whenever possible, quantitative expectations on the intensity of evolutionary drivers in forest trees. Then, we review the effects of actual and potential forestry practice on the evolutionary processes. We illustrate the complexity of interactions in two study cases: the evolutionary consequences for forest trees of biotic interactions and of highly heterogeneous environment. & Conclusion Evolution-oriented forestry may contribute adapting forests to climate change. It requires combining short-term and long-term objectives. We propose future lines of research and experimentation.

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International audience• ContextIn recent decades, there have been increasing reports of forest decline, especially in Mediterranean forest ecosystems. Decline in tree vitality is usually due to complex interactions between abiotic factors and biotic agents that attack weakened trees.• Aims and methodsEstimating dendrometrical characteristics [basal area increment (BAI), age at DBH from tree ring counting, social status, height, and diameter], tree health status, and a competition index, we investigated the individual vulnerability of a French declining silver fir forest to both mistletoe (Viscum album L. ssp. abietis) and bark beetles (Pityophthorus pityographus Ratz., Pityokteines vorontzovi Jac., and Pityokteines spinidens Reitt.).• ResultsBAI was negatively correlated with both mistletoe infection (via mistletoe biomass) and bark beetle attack (number of insects per square meter), but there was evidence of divergence in tree choice between two groups of parasites. Mistletoe preferentially infected isolated and dominant trees that showed higher past growth rates than non-infected ones. Conversely, bark beetles mainly attacked defoliated and preferably declining trees with diameter (DBH) lower than 44.5 cm and slower past growth.• ConclusionWhile successive severe drought periods are thought to greatly weaken southern silver fir populations, mistletoe and bark beetles may contribute actively to their decline processes as inciting and contributing factors, respectively

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