The Potential for Long-Term Sustainability in Seminatural Forestry: A Broad Perspective Based on Woodpecker Populations

Abstract

We assessed ecological sustainability of seminatural forestry by analyzing 80-year dynamics and the current distribution of all woodpecker species in Estonia. We found that, despite the clear-cutting-based forestry system, woodpeckers inhabited commercial seminatural forests in substantial numbers, including the species generally considered vulnerable to timber harvesting. The only negative trend, a drastic decline in the Green Woodpecker, paralleled the loss of seminatural, wooded grasslands and is mostly an issue for landscape planning and agricultural land use. Major silvicultural factors supporting other species in commercial forests include natural regeneration with multiple native tree species and deadwood abundance. In such context, the main role of protected areas is to provide ecological resilience; however, we estimated that the current strict reserves could further double their carrying capacities for woodpeckers through successional recovery and, perhaps, active restoration. The long time series used were instrumental in detecting unexpected dynamics and the impacts of climatically extreme years. We conclude that (1) seminatural forestry can serve as a basis for reconciling timber harvesting and biodiversity protection at the landscape scale, given appropriate attention to key structures and landscape zoning and (2) woodpeckers represent a biological indicator system for the sustainability of forest landscapes in Europe.

Do increases in the availability of standing dead trees affect the abundance, nest-site use, and niche partitioning of great spotted and middle spotted woodpeckers in riverine forests?

“…We use the term ''territory'', because middle spotted woodpeckers defend almost exclusive territories during March and April, with both sexes participating to similar degrees in territorial defense (Pasinelli et al 2001). On the basis of our long-term experience, we assumed that two registrations in the pre-breeding period was sufficient to accept a territory (Lõhmus et al 2016;Stachura-Skierczyńska and Kosiński 2016), and to exclude transient/floater birds (Pasinelli et al 2001;Robles and Ciudad 2012). Moreover, two visits allow an experienced observer to find almost 100% of territories in the pre-breeding period (Z. Kosiński unpubl.…”

Woodpeckers in Western Norway: the White-backed Woodpecker is still the most common species

“…The woodpecker species in this study represent three different feeding strategies (Lõhmus et al 2016). First, there are two dead-wood dependent species, the White-backed Woodpecker and the Lesser Spotted Woodpecker.…”

“…These coastal areas are characterized by mild winters and few days with snow cover. Lõhmus et al (2016) found that the population density of the Grey-headed Woodpecker was vulnerable to prolonged periods of cold winters and deep snow. A period of low abundance was documented following three snowrich winters in 2009/2010, 2010(Lõhmus et al 2016.…”

The Potential of Production Forests for Sustaining Lichen Diversity: A Perspective on Sustainable Forest Management

“…We build on nearly 20 years of research on biodiversity in Estonian forests where we have used standard sampling designs to test the responses of species and assemblages to various influences of even-aged forestry (e.g., [15][16][17][18]). The Estonian context is suitable for general insight because it has, until recently, adopted a "semi-natural forestry" approach, which mitigates environmental impacts of even-aged forestry and forestry drainage by frequently using natural regeneration, tree retention, and low intensity of thinnings [19,20]. In addition to relatively intact species pools, a semi-natural context reveals species that depend on naturally developing forests (strict protection) from those, which are restricted to such forests only because of inadequate habitat provision in production stands [11,17,21].…”