Ten principles for conservation translocations of threatened wood-inhabiting fungi

Abstract Unlike for many other organism groups, conservation translocations of fungi are still rare. Encouraged by recent successful translocations, there is a growing interest in applying this conservation tool to threatened wood-inhabiting fungi. When combined with other conservation or restoration measures, translocation can be an effective measure for preventing further population decline in the short term, and species extinctions in the long term. Translocations can be appropriate for rare and specialist fungal species that occur as small local populations in isolated patches across fragmented landscapes, where there is a low likelihood of successful dispersal between distant host tree…

Perennial polypores as indicators of annual and red-listed polypores

Abstract Many polypores are specialized in their requirements for substrate and environment, and they have been suggested to indicate the continuity of coarse woody debris or naturalness of a forest stand. However, the use of polypores as indicators of conservation value is restricted by the temporally limited appearance of annual fruit bodies. We studied whether the species richness of perennial polypores (perennials) can be used to predict the species richness of annual or annual red-listed polypores (annuals). Our data included 1471 separate datasets (sample plots or larger inventoried areas) in different parts of Finland and Russian Karelia, ranging from the southern to northern boreal …

Fungal communities decline with urbanization : more in air than in soil

Increasing evidence suggests that degradation of biodiversity in human populated areas is a threat for the ecosystem processes that are relevant for human well-being. Fungi are a megadiverse kingdom that plays a key role in ecosystem processes and affects human well-being. How urbanization influences fungi has remained poorly understood, partially due to the methodological difficulties in comprehensively surveying fungi. Here we show that both aerial and soil fungal communities are greatly poorer in urban than in natural areas. Strikingly, a fivefold reduction in fungal DNA abundance took place in both air and soil samples already at 1 km scale when crossing the edge from natural to urban h…

Challenges of ecological restoration: Lessons from forests in northern Europe

The alarming rate of ecosystem degradation has raised the need for ecological restoration throughout different biomes and continents. North European forests may appear as one of the least vulnerable ecosystems from a global perspective, since forest cover is not rapidly decreasing and many ecosystem services remain at high level. However, extensive areas of northern forests are heavily exploited and have lost a major part of their biodiversity value. There is a strong requirement to restore these areas towards a more natural condition in order to meet the targets of the Convention on Biological Diversity. Several northern countries are now taking up this challenge by restoring forest biodiv…

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Elinympäristöjen tilan edistäminen Suomessa : ELITE-työryhmän mietintö elinympäristöjen tilan edistämisen priorisointisuunnitelmaksi ja arvio suunnitelman kokonaiskustannuksista

Kestävä luonnonvarojen käyttö on perusta sekä ihmisen että luonnon hyvinvoinnille. Tähän mietintöön on koottu Elinympäristöjen tilan edistämisen (ELITE) työryhmän työn tulokset. Työ edistää osaltaan luonnonvarojen käytön kestävyyttä antamalla suuntaviivoja luonnon monimuotoisuuden turvaamiseen Suomen metsissä, soilla, perinnebiotoopeilla, maatalousalueilla, kallioilla, tuntureilla sekä rannikolla. Osin tarkastelussa mukana olivat myös kaupunkiympäristöt ja sisävedet. Varsinaisen tarkastelun ulkopuolelle jätettiin rannikkovesien ulkopuoliset meret. Elinympäristöjen tilan edistämisen toimenpiteet voivat käsittää suojelua, luonnonhoitoa tai perinteisellä tavalla ymmärrettyä ennallistamista. To…

Managing conservation values of protected sites: How to maintain deciduous trees in white-backed woodpecker territories

Successional and other temporal habitat changes may also affect conservation areas and reduce their conservation value. Active management to promote vulnerable habitat features may be an effective, but controversial, solution. Old deciduous trees and deciduous dead wood in boreal forest reserves are examples of habitat features that may be lost during succession, yet several threatened species, including the white-backed woodpecker (Dendrocopos leucotos), are dependent on them. Encroaching spruce have been removed from white-backed woodpecker territories to promote the regeneration of deciduous trees and to preserve habitat quality, although the efficiency of this treatment is unclear. In t…

Red List of Ecosystems: assessing the quality of boreal forests in Finland

IUCN recently published guidelines for Red List of Ecosystems (RLE) risk assessment [1]. The RLE criteria include consideration of changes in an area and the geographic distribution of ecosystems but also of changes in the biotic and abiotic ecological quality of ecosystems. In widely distributed ecosystems, such as boreal forests in Finland, ecological quality is often more important than the spatial extent of an area in assessing threat status. Therefore, it is important to find quantitative variables that are good surrogates for the overall quality of an ecosystem. In the RLE assessment of Finland, we divided boreal forests into 40 ecosystem types. Of these, forests with mineral soils (1…

Introduction – Does nature best manage itself or do protected areas need active conservation?

A traditional approach to limit impacts of forestry on biodiversity is to set aside forests of conservation value. Many set-asides are relatively untouched, but some have a history of disturbances; wildfires, forest grazing, coppicing or small-scale felling. Such areas may gradually lose their value for biodiversity conservation unless the disturbances are re-introduced or managed otherwise. On the other hand, many currently protected forests have a history of commercial management, and may lack important characteristics of natural forests. Some of these lost features, can be brought back by active management faster than they would recover naturally. Recently, interest in active management …

Burning harvested sites enhances polypore diversity

Prescribed burning after clear-cut has been used as a silvicultural method, but it has also been found to support biodiversity. We asked what is the impact of fire on polypores that grow on stumps and slash left on clear-cut sites. Eighteen one-hectare study stands were cut with different levels of retention trees and nine of the sites were burned the following summer. The study sites are located in eastern Finland in forests that are dominated by Pinus sylvestris. We sampled stumps and slash for polypores ten years after cuttings and burnings. We sampled 14 235 stumps and 13 345 pieces of slash and counted 7 179 polypore records of 74 species on these. More polypores were found from burned…

How does manipulation of dead wood affect forest biodiversity? - A systematic review

Dead wood (DW) provides a critical habitat for thousands of wood-dependent (saproxylic) species in forests. However, intensification of forest management has heavily reduced the amount and diversity of DW. This has resulted in many saproxylic species being threatened and has caused a situation where interventions aiming at increasing DW might be necessary to support its associated biodiversity. Examples of such interventions include felling, girdling, creation of high stumps, leaving of crowns, logs and trees during harvest operations, and restoration burnings. Although the evidence base on how effective different interventions aiming at increasing DW volumes grows, there is a lack of revie…