INTEGRATING BIODIVERSITY INTO FOREST MANAGEMENT PLANNING AND DECISION-MAKING

In this paper, an approach is presented for incorporating biological d iversity into strategic forest management planning. Alternative manage ment strategies are evaluated with respect to biodiversity using Saaty 's ratio scale estimation method. Biodiversity consists of a variety o f components, their importance depending on context, definition and th e objectives of the decision-maker in question. In this study, biodive rsity is decomposed into three characteristics: species richness, rari ty and vulnerability of the species. Weights of the components of biod iversity are assessed on the grounds of pairwise comparisons between t he importance of the components, made by an expert on conservation bio logy. Maximizing biodiversity is added as an objective to a decision h ierarchy of a planning problem of multiple-use forestry. The weight of biodiversity, in relation to other objectives, is determined based on the preferences of the decision-maker. A case study is reported where biodiversity is integrated into forest management planning. The main problems in the application of the presented approach include, primari ly, the lack of general agreement on operational definition of biodive rsity, and, secondly, the lack of objective knowledge for evaluating d ecision alternatives with respect to components of biodiversity.