Belarusian Polish Forest Mapping Belarusian Polish Forest Mapping

Belarusian-Polish Forest Mapping project
1. Introduction
1.1. What is the Belarusian-Polish Forest Mapping project?
Forest biodiversity conservation is one of the major objectives of modern forest management.
This objective can be attained only by creating a network of linked protected areas which ensures
the functional persistence of the whole system. Only such a system can guarantee the continuity
of the ecological processes which are needed to conserve forest biodiversity. The effectiveness
and persistence of such a network depend on: (a) ensuring proper protection of a sufficient
number and size of forest sites representing all major types of forest ecosystems; and (b)
preventing the sites’ ecological isolation by creating a functional system of ecological corridors.
In practice this means that the protection of designated areas must be integrated with
environmentally conscious management of the commercial stands surrounding them. To enable
preservation of forest biodiversity, the ecological requirements of various species must be met on
both temporal and spatial scales.
The major goals of this project were: (1) to identify all potential Biologically Important Forests
(BIFs) in Poland and Belarus on the basis of available sources of data; and (2) to map the areas
with a high proportion of BIFs. In this way, the project creates a tool for assessment of the
quality and representativeness of the region’s existing network of protected areas, and can form a
basis for planning activities aiming at optimisation of both a national and cross-border system of
forest protection and management.
Although some of the data was concerned with individual forest stands, this project is focused on
locating BIFs at the landscape scale, rather than single stands. The results of this project should
therefore be considered and applied primarily at the landscape level. For example, the ecological
requirements of many rare forest-dependent species such as the Capercaillie (Tetrao urogallus),
the Black Stork (Ciconia nigra), woodpeckers and birds of prey that are taken into account in the
criterion, concern areas much larger than single forest stands.
The Belarusian-Polish Forest Mapping is part of a continuing initiative, which already includes
seven European countries. The first to join the Forest Mapping Program were Lithuania, Latvia
and Estonia. Their joint project, termed Baltic Forest Mapping, was initiated by BirdLife Finland
and WWF Finland. The current module of the program was carried out in Poland and Belarus by
the BirdLife European Forest Task Force in cooperation with its Polish and Belarusian partners.
In 2007 the BIF Mapping project extended to Bulgaria and Romania as BRFM (Bulgarian-
Romanian Forest Mapping).
BIFs overlap legally protected areas, forests distinguished as “High Conservation Value
Forests”, following the toolkit developed by ProForest Ltd. (but without social criteria), forested
parts of sites designated as Important Bird Areas or Important Plant Areas, Woodland Key
Habitats, as well as forests identified on the basis of the project's specific criteria.
1.2. High Conservation Value Forests, Important Bird and Plant Areas, Woodland
Key Habitats
The concept of High Conservation Value Forests was developed by the Forest Stewardship
Council (FSC) in 1999. Identification of HCVFs is one of the key conditions of principles and
criteria for sustainable forest management (Principle 9 of FSC Principles and Criteria - available
from www.fsc.org). The FSC’s definition of HCVs encompasses exceptional or critical
ecological attributes, ecosystem services and social functions as follows:
• HCV 1 – Forest areas containing globally, regionally or nationally significant
concentrations of biodiversity values.
5