Sustainable Forest Management: Keeping the potential of forest biodiversity unlocked

Monday, August 29 , 2022 248

European forest owners and managers are, and always have been, strongly committed to actively pursuing and sustainably managing Europe’s forests to provide a viable home for biodiversity for current and future generations.

To underline our commitment a Joint Statement "Sustainable Forest Management: Keeping the potential of forest biodiversity unlocked" was released today during the organized by FOREST EUROPE High-Level Talks.

Union of European Foresters together with CEPF – Confederation of European Forest Owners; Copa-Cogeca – European Farmers and Agri-Cooperatives, ELO – European Landowners’ Organization, EUSTAFOR – European State Forest Association, FECOF - European Federation of Forest-Owning Communities, Pro Silva – European federation of foresters for PRO SILVA management and USSE – Union of Foresters of Southern Europe prepared a Joint Statement that underlines the indispensable need of active involvement of all forest owners and managers in order to allow forest biodiversity to thrive.

The document states also that all Pan-European, EU and national forest-related policies need to promote a dynamic approach to nature conservation as part of SFM. This will require:
- effective technical, scientific and policy cooperation, leading to an improved implementation
of existing policies on already-designated sites;
- the promotion of voluntary approaches to foster increased biodiversity conservation;
- improved knowledge of the scope and scale of climate change impacts on European forests and their biodiversity, and education on ways to tackle, prevent and better adapt forests to these changes;
- effective financial means, provided by economically viable forest management itself or external sources.
 

The whole text of the Joint statement is available at: https://european-foresters.eu/docs/news/220829%20-%20FINAL%20Joint%20Statement.pdf

The UEF Presidency