Re-inventing the discipline of forestry — a forest ecology perspective

Achieving ecologically sustainable forest management will be a major challenge for the forestry profession. In this context, forest managers need to acknowledge that timber production no longer holds primacy in off-reserve areas and other forest values are of equal importance such as the conservation of biodiversity and the production of water. The maintenance of these other values will require a change in the general philosophy associated with silvicultural practices from simply growing and cutting crops of trees to the creation and perpetuation of key components of stand structure and plant species composition (e.g. large, old hollow-bearing trees and intact thickets of understorey vegetation). This may require a shift from conventional logging methods to the development of new and potentially more complex silvicultural systems. Increasing the complexity of forest management should be viewed as a normal part of modern forestry and not a constraint on the profession. Indeed, these challenges represent an important opportunity to take forestry forward within a more holistic approach to environmental and forest resource management.