6.4.

Interventions providing biodiversity as well as productivity benefits

The primary benefit of the approaches above is the restoration of some or most of the
biodiversity. Immediate or direct improvements in human well-being are often limited,
although considerable indirect economic and social benefits may develop over time because
of the ecological services provided (e.g. watershed protection). The absence of an early direct
benefit necessarily limits the number of situations in which ecological restoration might be
attempted. It also means that restoration is usually attempted only in relatively small areas.
The most common alternative method of overcoming degradation is some form of
reclamation using monoculture plantings of a single species. These species are usually exotic
trees that provide a commercial benefit but do nothing to reverse the ongoing trend towards
landscape simplification. Some of the advantages and disadvantages are shown in Table 2. A
third alternative is the approach referred to earlier as rehabilitation, in which are several other
ways to overcome degradation that provide a commercial or socially useful product and also
increase biodiversity across the landscape. As well as improving biodiversity, some of these
approaches may even offer better production or additional benefits than those provided by
reclamation.
6.4.1 Managing secondary forests
Secondary or regrowth forests are often viewed as having little biodiversity
value or potential for contributing to rural livelihoods. For example, they are
often thought to be exclusively occupied by trees with low timber densities that
have little economic value. These assumptions may be wrong. Depending on
their origins, they may be able to make a substantial contribution to biodiversity
protection and also help provide a variety of goods and services. In addition, the
sheer extent of the areas of secondary forest now found in most tropical areas
demands that they receive more attention.
Several alternatives are possible depending on the origins of the forest
and the range and abundance of the species it contains. One option is to simply
protect the forest and manage the harvesting of existing plants and animals.
This requires care because of the risk that the forest will degrade further unless
harvesting is carefully regulated. On the other hand, careful management might
also allow the gradual improvement of resources as well as biodiversity and
other ecological service at minimal cost. Another approach might be to foster the
growth of certain tree or other plant species within the forest that are
commercially attractive by removing or thinning competing trees. This may
mean the relative abundance of these favoured species increases over tim
although the overall biodiversity of the forest will probably be maintained.
6.4.2 Enrichment plantings
Some forests are degraded by heavy logging. They sometimes lose their
most commercially attractive timbers because these were not represented in any
advanced growth (i.e. saplings and trees smaller than the cutting limit) or
because the advanced growth was damaged by the logging operation (point D on
Figure 2a). Such forests may still have significant timber resources, however.
Rather than clear-felling and replacement by timber plantations, enrichment
planting is a way to enhance commercial productivity while maintaining the sites
as essentially “natural” forests. A common method of enrichment is to plant
fast-growing and commercially attractive species in the new postlogging light
gaps or in strips cut through the forest. Similar forms of enrichment can be used
for non-timber species such as fruit or nut trees as well as rattans, medicinal
plants or food plants. This approach has several advantages. It enhances the
capacity of the forest to maintain commercial or social productivity by
promoting the growth of economically desired species. It also conserves any
residual advanced growth or natural regeneration of timber trees. In addition, it
maintains much of the residual biodiversity still present and prevents the forest
from being cleared for other uses such as agriculture or plantations. The
disadvantage of the approach is the risk that fast- growing trees may stagnate
once canopy gaps close over and weeds or vines swamp the planted species.
Some form of treatment is often required for several years to ensure success.

6.4.3 Agroforestry

Agroforestry is a form of agriculture that combines complex mixtures of

trees and other crops grown in the same area of land. There are a variety of
formats. Some involve mixtures of multipurpose trees and food crops; others
combine scattered trees and pastures. In most cases a variety of species are used
in the farm or “home garden” that differ in canopy and root architecture,
phenology and longevity. Some of these different versions of agroforestry are
reviewed by MacDicken and Vergara (1990) and Clarke and Thaman (1993). In
terms of overcoming land degradation, agroforestry has some particular
advantages, most especially in landscapes where land for food production is
limited and where human populations are large or increasing. Agroforestry is
able to provide food and agricultural products for these communities in a way
that is relatively sustainable. Further, it creates spatial and structural complexity
across landscapes and offers the prospect of agricultural sustainability. Some of
the most interesting examples of agroforestry occur in Indonesia, where some
extremely diverse forests have been established to yield rubber, resin or
fruit (see case study 8.9). A description of how highly diverse agroforests such
as these might be established even on extensively degraded grasslands is found
in de Foresta and Michon (1997). There are some potential disadvantages.
Biodiversity gains are not always as large as those in Indonesia despite the
variety of plants used and the inherent complexity of most agroforestry systems.
This is because many of the species used are relatively common agricultural
crop species, only a few of which may be indigenous to the area. Further, not all
agroforestry systems are developed on highly degraded lands; agroforestry may
result in a loss of species if, for example, a farmer establishes a new home
garden in a species-rich secondary forest or a forest that has been subject to a
single logging operation.

6.4.4 Monoculture plantations using indigenous species

Timber plantations are often established as monocultures using exotic
species. There are a number of reasons for this. Such plantations are easy to
manage, nursery methods for raising large numbers of seedlings are well-known
and silviculture techniques are understood. These species are also fast growing
and usually established in the marketplace. They come as a technical “package”
that is attractive to plantation managers and to farmers establishing small farm
woodlots.
Indigenous species rarely have any of these advantages. This means they
are usually bypassed when industrial production is required, particularly when
native timber can still be harvested from natural forests. Indigenous species do
have some advantages, however; in particular timber quality and price. They
may not be able to compete in the high-volume industrial market but are very
competitive in more specialised markets. Although their volume increment per
year may not be high their value increment can be large. This advantage may
increase further if timber supplies from native forests decline (as they have in
many tropical forests). Further, many indigenous species are well suited to the
climate. Thus there seems to be scope to include native species as part of
plantation programs for the financial benefits they may bring. Monocultures
might not lead to large benefits in terms of restoring biological diversity to
degraded landscapes but will enable indigenous species to be retained in the
region and may benefit wildlife that is adapted to or dependent on them.
In some situations, planting native species in plantations can
disadvantage land-owners and discourage deforestation. For example,
governments in parts of Kenya and other parts of east Africa have declared
certain species to be government property even when they were planted by
farmers on private land. Likewise, in parts of Australia, land-owners who planted
native tree species were prevented from harvesting them because of the loss of
community “conservation” benefit this would entail. Such counter-productive
activities are a major disincentive to using native species and need to be
stopped. Plantations of indigenous tree species are not the only way to rehabili-
tate degraded landscapes. Monocultures of exotic tree species may be useful at
severely degraded sites, when these are the only species able to tolerate existing
site conditions. In some cases it may be necessary to restore site fertility using
an exotic nitrogen-fixing species such as acacia before using any native species
in plantations. Likewise, salttolerant species may be needed in salinized
landscapes to lower water tables before planting indigenous species.

6.4.5 Monoculture plantations and buffer strips

A simple means of enhancing the conservation benefits of plantation
monocultures is to embed the plantings in a matrix of buffer strips of forest that
has been restored by one of the approaches described earlier. This immediately
introduces much more spatial complexity to a landscape and helps to increase
connectivity. Each strip can be a corridor that enables wildlife to move from one
area to another. While there has been considerable debate in recent years about
the merits of corridors, there seems to be little doubt of the advantages of
enhanced linkages (Bennett 1999). Corridors have other major benefits; e.g. they
provide fire breaks and act as streamside filters to enhance water-shed
protection. These advantages may help to overcome the perceived disadvantage
that they occupy land which could be used for production.

6.4.6 Mosaics of species monocultures

In many industrial plantations a single species is used across the entire
landscape irrespective of landform or soil fertility. Sites are modified by
ploughing or fertilising to suit the species. There may be advantages in using
more than one species to take advantage of this environmental heterogeneity. By
matching species to sites it may be possible to enhance overall plantation
productivity and improve landscape diversity. The landscape diversity in a
mosaic of two or more plantation species could be further enhanced by
surrounding each monoculture by buffer strips as described above. The
advantage of this is that plantation silviculture remains simple; the disadvantage
is that precise species-site relationships must be known if productivity is to be
maximised.

6.4.7 Mixed species plantations

Plantations are commonly established using a single species monoculture
because it is the easiest to manage. Some landscape biodiversity can be
increased if mixed species polycultures are used. These might be temporary
mixtures where one species is used for a short period as some form of nurse or
cover crop (e.g. Keenan et al. 1995), or may be permanent for the life of the
plantation. Biodiversity gains from mixed species plantations are usually modest
since most of them contain relatively small numbers of tree species. But
evidence is growing that there may be production or financial advantages as well
as biodiversity gains from using mixed species plantings. These benefits result
from better site use, improved tree nutrition and less insect or pest damage.
There may also be financial gains from combining fast-growing species
(harvested early in a rotation) with more valuable species that need longer
rotations. Plantation mixtures have several disadvantages, however. One is the
difficulty of assembling complementary and stable mixtures. Not all species
combinations are necessarily compatible and an inappropriate mix of species
may lead to commercial failure. Work is needed to identify species that are
similarly competitive and therefore complementary. A second problem is that
having two or more species in a plantation necessarily leads to more complex
forms of silviculture and management. This means that mixtures are likely to be
more attractive to smallholders and farm forestry woodlots than large industrial-
scale plantations.

6.4.8 Encouragement of understorey development

In many plantation forests, especially those near areas of intact forest, an
understorey of native tree and shrub species will develop over time. A large
number of species may colonise, leading to a substantial change in the
appearance and structure of the plantation over time (Figure 6). Some weed
species may be part of the new community, although many studies have found
these to be only a minor component of the total understorey flora. Many of the
species are dispersed by animals, indicating that wildlife use plantations for
foraging and transit.
Tree plantations established for commercial timber production are
eventually harvested. This means that any biodiversity they contain is
destroyed. Thus the conservation benefits of industrial or commercial
plantations can be seen as short term. But during the rotation the plantation may
have helped buffer remnants of intact forest and protected them from further
degradation. The plantation may also have extended the habitat of a particular
species or provided a link between isolated populations of plants or animals in
small remnant areas. Many of these benefits can be reacquired if the plantation
is re-established,especially if remnants of intact vegetation remain in the
landscape.
In some cases the conservation benefits of the plantation will have
increased over the period of the plantation and may now be more valuable than
the timber. In this case the managers may chose to develop some form of
selection logging that causes less impact than clear-felling, or even change the
management objective entirely and manage the enriched plantation for
conservation purposes alone.