MANAGING BIODIVERSITY IN A FORESTRY ENVIRONMENT

In forest management and other land-use planning, ecological, social, and economical demands often conflict. Forest planning in particular h as been biased towards maximizing economic output while disregarding t he ecological effects of forestry practices. In this paper we present an approach for taking biological diversity into account in strategic forest management planning. We used the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AH P) method for resource allocation and priority setting. We carried out a case study, whereby a set of management strategies was evaluated in order to identify the strategy which best fulfills the requirement of maintaining biological diversity while at the same time yielding a re asonable income from timber production. We discuss applicability of th e approach in solving different forest management and conservation pla nning problems, as well as in assessment of ecological impacts.