Conservation implications of forest changes caused by bark beetle management in the Sumava National Park
Abstract
The question, whether the forest management adopted in several European national parks following natural disturbances (windstorms, bark beetle) is in the long term the optimal one is currently widely discussed in a panEuropean context. Instead of a clear management policy, however, only non-compulsory recommendations are suggested and management directives are missing.
For example, it is established that non-intervention management is optimal for preserving biodiversity in mountain spruce stands, as logging diminishes biodiversity, but no such recommendation has been passed on to the managers of these stands. In the absence of such guidance park managers adopt various suboptimal strategies, which depend on who owns a particular area of the forest (private or state-owned) and their priorities.
Here we present an example of this: the differences between the management practices applied by state and private owners in the central part of the Sumava NP. Using aerial photographs, we evaluated the effect of these practices by comparing the status of Natura 2000 habitats in 2004 (when the Natura 2000 area was designated), with that in 2011 (four years after the Kyrill wind storm, when the post-wind storm activities had more or less finished).
The private owner logged and removed trees from significantly larger areas than the Sumava NP Authority.