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Primary forests, defined here as forests where the signs of human impacts, if any, are strongly blurred due to decades without forest management, are scarce in Europe and continue to disappear. Despite these losses, we know little about where these forests occur. Here, we present a comprehensive geodatabase and map of Europe’s known primary forests. Our geodatabase harmonizes 48 different, mostly field-based datasets of primary forests, and contains 18,411 individual patches (41.1 Mha) spread across 33 countries. When available, we provide information on each patch (name, location, naturalness, extent and dominant tree species) and the surrounding landscape (biogeographical regions, protection status, potential natural vegetation, current forest extent). Using Landsat satellite-image time series (1985–2018) we checked each patch for possible disturbance events since primary forests were identified, resulting in 94% of patches free of significant disturbances in the last 30 years. Although knowledge gaps remain, ours is the most comprehensive dataset on primary forests in Europe, and will be useful for ecological studies, and conservation planning to safeguard these unique forests.

The carbon stock in Europe's forests is decreasing and the importance of protecting ‘unmanaged’ forests must be recognised in reversing this process. In order to keep carbon out of the atmosphere and to meet the Paris Agreement goals, the remaining primary forests must be protected and secondary forests should be allowed to continue growing to preserve existing carbon stocks and accumulate additional stocks. Scientific evidence suggests that ‘unmanaged’ forests have higher total biomass carbon stock than secondary forests being actively managed for commodity production or recently abandoned.

Forests are critical for biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation: reducing emissions, increasing removals, and providing resilient ecosystems with stable long-term carbon storage. However, evaluating the mitigation effectiveness of forests managed for conservation versus commodity production has been long debated. We assessed factors influencing evaluation of mitigation effectiveness--land area, time horizon, reference level, carbon stock longevity--and tested the outcomes using analyses of carbon dynamics from an Australian ecosystem. Results showed that landscape scale accounting using carbon carrying capacity as the reference level and assessed over a series of time horizons best enables explicit evaluation of mitigation benefits. Time horizons need to differentiate between near-term emissions reduction targets (2030 and 2050), relative longevity of carbon stocks in different reservoirs, and long-term impacts on atmospheric CO 2 concentration. Greatest mitigation benefits derive from conservation through continued forest growth (52% gain in carbon stock by 2050) and accumulating carbon to attain carbon retention potential (70% gain). Cumulative emissions from harvesting result in permanent elevation of atmospheric CO 2 concentration (32 times the annual emission by rotation end). We recommend these time horizons and landscape scales for evaluating forest management to better guide policies and investments for achieving climate mitigation and biodiversity conservation.

AbstrActa unique momentum has been created over the past few years for strengthening the protection of wilderness in europe. Policy makers started to pay attention to the importance of truly untouched and non-managed areas and the european Parliament adopted a special report on wilderness in February 2009. the report was followed by the ec Presidency conference in Prague, May 2009, on Wilderness areas. the most important outcome of this event was the approval of the 'agenda for Wilderness' , which eventually led to the inclusion of wilderness in the new eu Biodiversity strategy. this paper argues that these political successes have yet to be put into practice. threats to wilderness areas are still increasing and there have been no improvements in the management of these areas. there are emerging threats, especially from tree felling and mining, which is driven by increase in commodity prices. in order to save the last pieces of wilderness in europe and utilize the current opportunities to restore wilderness areas, science and field conservation must develop a common Wilderness research agenda for europe. the main questions are: (i) What are the ecosystem services and benefits that humans obtain for wilderness areas? (ii) What is the potential contribution of such wilderness areas for reducing biodiversity loss, halt species extinctions and support biodiversity restoration in europe? (iii) What is the social perception of wilderness in different countries and across different sectors of society? (iv) What should be considered wilderness in a densely populated area such as europe?

This study was realized and funded by the project "Policy and on-ground action for primary forest protection, boreal and temperate primary forests" funded through the Griffith University (Australia) and implemented by the Frankfurt Zoological Society (FZS) and Wild Europe Initiative as well as the Naturwald Akademie. Additional funding derive from the European Commission (Marie Sklodowska-Curie fellowship to FMS, project FORESTS & CO, #658876).

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The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has operated in Hungary since 1986 and has focused its efforts on forests, wetlands, and agriculture. Activities take three forms: policy, field work, and public relations. The WWF has a network of contacts and has issued policy papers to generate government and public attention to certain problems. The organization has paid special attention to privatization processes and aims to transfer this knowledge elsewhere. The article also surveys various WWF field projects.