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INTACT FORESTS OF HIGH CONSERVATION VALUE IN THE REPUBLIC OF KARELIA
Intact (Old growth) Forests as High Conservation Value Forests
The interest to mapping high conservation value forests (HCVF) is due to a fact that public opinion in different countries all the more force timber products producers and traders to undertake efforts to ensure conservation of HCVF. In Russia, growing environmental demands increased the interest of forest industries to forest management certificates according to Forest Stewardship Council scheme (FSC), which inter alia guarantees consumers that while buying products of a particular timber company they do not promote destruction of HCVF.
Russian National Framework FSC Standard (in Russian) requires from forest managers to undertake efforts to ensure effective protection of high conservation values of such forests (see Annex E).
At the moment the most urgent task is to develop, implement and verify scientifically sound, technically understandable and reproducible methods for mapping HCVF in particular regions, which will be in compliance with FSC requirements. Since recently the HCVF concept is also widely used beyond voluntary forest certification schemes (e.g. to make functional zoning of an area and to prioritize areas for forest conservation).
FSC Standard for Responsible Forest Stewardship mentions 6 main categories of HCVF. Their brief descriptions can be, for example, found here. For further details see Jennings et al., The High Conservation Value Forest Toolkit, 2003.
The number of HCVF categories considered in this book was intentially restricted by those that provide protection of natural biological diversity (first of all of vegetation cover) and did not include categories that relate to maintenance of forest of social significance and forest that provide basic ecosystem services. HCVF categories that relate to biological diversity are as follows:
- HCV 1. Areas containing globally, regionally or nationally significant concentrations of biodiversity values:
- HCV 1.2. Threatened and endangered species.
- HCV 1.3. Endemic species.
- HCV 1.4. Critical temporal use.
- HCV 2. Regionally or nationally significant large landscape-level areas where viable populations of most if not all naturally occurring species exist in natural patterns of distribution and abundance.
- HCV 3. Areas that are in or contain rare, threatened or endangered ecosystems.
Identified and mapped intact (old growth) forests in Karelia refer to the following HCVF categories according to FSC:
- Intact forest landscapes – also known as HCV 2 Globally and nationally significant large landscape level forests. Regionally and nationally significant large forest landscapes significant.
- Intact forest tracts – also known as old growth forest tracts – partly refer to regionally significant HCV 2; partly to HCV 1 (especially HCV 1.2) and to HCV 3.
- Fragments of old growth forests also refer to HCV 1.2 and to regionally significant HCV 3.
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