Role of forest certification in biodiversity conservation in Lithuania

Abstract: Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification scheme emerged as an instrument to notify well managed forests. There are endless discussions about the actual FSC certification contribution to biodiversity conservation. In this thesis Lithuanian FSC certified forests were assessed regarding biodiversity protection measures implemented on the ground. First, FSC Lithuanian standard indicators concerning biodiversity measures were selected and grouped according to the spatial scales of forest management that had to be performed in order to satisfy a certain indictor. Secondly, voluntary and formally set-aside areas for biodiversity conservation in FSC certified State Forest Enterprises (SFE) were compared. Lastly I examined structural habitat connectivity using morphological spatial pattern analysis tool. Lithuanian FSC standard indicators requirements were focused on the stand and landscape scales, while there were no indicators regarding ecoregion. The formally set-aside area was more than two times larger than voluntary. Structural habitat analysis showed that the most set-aside patches were smaller than 10 ha and had a small fraction of old forests. I discuss that FSC standard focuses on species with small habitat requirements. Moreover formal forest protection, due to several protection levels does not provide the same conservation measures, while voluntary set-asides are treated evenly. I conclude that to understand a role of FSC certification in forest biodiversity conservation it is important to evaluate formally and voluntary set-asides from protected species perspective to see functionality of the protected areas.