Webinar: Integrative forest management requires integrative solutions

• How can we manage our forests in the best way – both beneficial for nature and people?

• How can we integrate different forest functions and ecosystem services, and address trade-offs in forest management?

• How can we improve the communication and knowledge exchange between stakeholders who have “skin in the game” and potentially conflicting interests?

The European Integrate Network acts within the triangle of science, practice, and policy. This disposition is one major strength of the Network. During its annual meetings, many interesting and innovative examples were presented and visited on how close-to-nature silvicultural concepts and approaches, as well as biodiversity conservation measures, can be integrated into the forestry practice. We have also discussed and presented new integrative and inspiring ways for forest education and training and promoted research initiatives. However, all these examples and activities have mainly been initiated and discussed within the forestry sector.

Being very aware of this, we would like to stimulate with this webinar an open dialogue and mutual learning between different interest groups. We believe that despite different priorities for how to use and protect our forests, we need to collaborate more openly to find joint and integrative solutions for guaranteeing the future provision of the wide array of requested forest ecosystem services facing challenging times of climate change and increasing threats caused by disturbances.

Webinar objective: With this webinar, we would like to stimulate a solution-oriented discussion on tested methods and best practice approaches for overcoming silos and integrating the wide range of interests in forest ecosystems. We look forward to inviting different interest groups to exchange their perspectives and “integrating” their perspectives into the activities of our Integrate Network. This way, we understand Integrate activities as a driver for the development of new concepts as well as a platform to discuss, monitor and improve applied approaches around truly integrative forest management.

Our Panelists :

Dr. Susanne Winter (WWF), Teresa Baiges (Centre de la Propietat Forestal, Catalonia), Sabrina Dietz (FACE- European Federation for Hunting and Conservation)

Moderator: Jakob Derks (Wageningen University & Research)