How FSC certification can protect forests
On-the-ground protection for all species
Landowner must conduct surveys for endangered, threatened, and other species of conservation concern.
Cutting timber is not permitted in old-growth stands or forests
Old-growth is protected: A stand or forest that demonstrates old-growth characteristics and is unroaded or lightly roaded, with no evidence of previous logging.
Old forest is not: Forests that demonstrate old-growth characteristics but which have been previously harvested. They are managed to maintain or recruit: (1) the existing abundance of old trees and (2) the landscape- and stand-level structures of old-growth forests, consistent with the composition and structures produced by natural processes.
Limitation: "evidence" of clear-cuts can last for centuries. Who decides?
Landowner must identify and protect special places in order to be certified.
Decisions regarding high conservation value forests shall always be considered in the context of a precautionary approach.
Representative sample of all ecosystems must be maintained, although some logging is still allowed in them. MN DNR has a program to protect these places, called the Scientific and Natural Areas Program. The program has been able to protect less than one third of the sites necessary, and funding has been cut.
"High Conservation Value Forests" (HCVF) must be identified and protected, although some logging is still allowed in them. (See definition below.)
Limitation: the standards do not say how much land must be identified. What's more, MN DNR has said they are not logging designated old growth or high-biodiversity areas, but in some parts of the state they haven't yet identified them.
High Conservation Value Forests are those that possess one or more of the
following attributes:
- Forest areas containing globally, regionally or nationally significant: concentrations of biodiversity values (e.g., endemism, endangered species, refugia); and/or large landscape level forests, contained within, or containing the management unit, where viable populations of most if not all naturally occurring species exist in natural patterns of distribution and abundance
- Forest areas that are in or contain rare, threatened or endangered ecosystems
- Forest areas that provide basic services of nature in critical situations (e.g., watershed protection, erosion control)
- Forest areas fundamental to meeting basic needs of local communities (e.g., subsistence, health) and/or critical to local communities’ traditional cultural identity (identified in cooperation with such local communities).
Examples of forest areas that may have high conservation value attributes include, but are not limited to:
- Old growth
- Old forests/mixed age stands that include trees >120 years old. Old forests may or may not be designated "High Conservation Value" forest (HCVF), and may be harvested under special plans that account for the ecological attributes that make it an HCVF.
- Blocks of contiguous forest, > 500 ac, which host RTEs
- Oak savannas
- Pine stands of natural origin
- Contiguous blocks, >500 ac, of late successional species, that are managed to create old growth
- Fens, particularly calcareous fens
- Other non-forest communities, e.g., barrens, prairies, distinctive geological land forms, vernal pools
- Other sites as defined by GAP analysis, Natural Heritage Inventory, and/or the World Wildlife Fund’s Forest Communities of Highest Conservation Concern