If the aim is to protect all plant and animal life that lives in the forest, it is not enough to merely preserve smaller areas in conjunction with felling. Some species require the preservation of a larger area. This means that we must plan wildlife conservation from a landscape perspective and this is achieved by drafting so-called ecological landscape plans.
Pursuant to FSC standards, a minimum of 5% of the total forest holding shall be excluded from forestry activities. A compilation of SCA’s ecological landscape plans demonstrates that the company fulfils this requirement.
Conservation areas are formed in conjunction with SCA’s ecological landscape planning (ELP). These are areas that are larger than about one hectare where SCA has decided to preserve, postpone final felling or manage the area using alternative cultivation methods.
Efforts are also made to link the preserved forests in a network to ensure natural dispersal routes for animals and plants, for example, corridors that run alongside bogs and streams.
Recreating forest environments
As a result of the cultivation of forests over an extended period, some environments in the forest landscape have become scarce. Consequently, we are trying to recreate such rare environments that are important for the continued existence of certain animals and plants. For example, this applies to woodland that has been burned, since forest fires today are uncommon and are also quickly extinguished, and forest dominated by deciduous trees.
Preparing an ecological landscape plan
The preparation of an ecological landscape plan has five steps:
- subdivision into landscapes
- inventory of nature conservation value
- landscape analysis
- landscape plan
- regeneration of biotopes
A dynamic document
The ecological landscape plans are dynamic documents that can be updated. This means that when new valuable areas are discovered, they must be added to the landscape plans, while other areas are removed if, for some reason, they lose their value or are no longer deemed sufficiently valuable.
The aim of the amendments is to create more functional nature conservation.