FAQ: How do you protect wildlife in working forests?

A coalition of scientists, foresters, and companies across the supply chain, including Amazon, are piloting a new approach to wildlife conservation that could help protect dozens of species at once by making it easier to prevent biodiversity loss.

Key takeaways:

• Two-thirds of America's forests are working forests, which generate income for landowners through timber harvesting. 
• Costly or complex biodiversity compliance requirements can be one more factor that tips landowners toward selling to developers—permanently turning forests into developments like houses or apartments.
• A new pilot is helping loggers and landowners in northeastern U.S. forests identify and safeguard easy-to-spot habitats that provide shelter for dozens of species, which can help protect more plants and animals at once. 

Countless books are created from trees, some of them logged from the hills of the northeastern U.S. But the wood that feeds our paper mills isn’t felled in the wilderness; it comes from working forests—land that is managed, harvested, and regrown on a cycle. It’s a lot like a farm, but with decades between each "crop."

Today, two-thirds of America's forests are working forests, and they generate income through timber harvesting. That wood is turned into everyday items like paper, shipping boxes, lumber, flooring, and books. That revenue pays for the land management, the foresters, and the long-term stewardship of the property.

The forest is also a home to the wildlife that keeps these ecosystems running. Birds, amphibians, insects, and plants depend on the same trees that get cut down. In fact, 40% of animal species are at risk of extinction, according to NatureServe’s Biodiversity In Focus Report.

As long as the working forests are profitable, landowners have every reason to maintain their forest. When the economic incentive disappears, the forest loses its value, but the land does not. At that point, a landowner could sell to a developer, and that forest might become a subdivision, apartments, or a strip mall—permanently. That’s the risk facing forests in the Northeast.

“If we don’t have healthy forest management, it will be devastating to a lot of areas,” said Mike Hovatter, regional forester for Landvest, which manages timberland and forest resources across the U.S.

The tension is real. A salamander, for example, needs cold, shaded streams to survive. Remove the trees along its riverbank, the water warms, and the salamander vanishes. But one of the challenges of protecting species like this is finding them in the wild. 

“Some of these species are pretty cryptic,” said Dr. Joshua Daskin, chief scientist at Natureserve, which provides the scientific data and tools used to assess biodiversity across North America. “They’re hard to identify, and they’re in hidden places.”

So how do loggers and landowners protect creatures they can't even see?

For decades, they were given long lists of species’ names (many in Latin) and were told not to harm them. But loggers and landowners couldn't identify most of the species—how do you protect a salamander you've never seen and can't find? Over time, compliance became more of a box-checking exercise—well-intentioned, but difficult to put into practice.

Now a coalition of scientists, foresters, and companies are trying something different. Natureserve, The Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI), Amazon, and Weyerhaeuser—a Climate Pledge signatory—have launched a pilot project built around efficiency that aims to protect the places these species share. By identifying and safeguarding what scientists call Unique Landscape Features—easy-to-spot habitats like rock outcroppings, small seasonal ponds known as vernal pools, and shaded stream corridors—loggers and landowners can shelter dozens of species before a harvest.

The elegance is in the economics. When biodiversity protection stays simple, forestry stays profitable. And when forestry stays profitable, landowners can keep their land instead of selling it to developers. Pilots like this can help support the economic viability of keeping a forest a forest, rather than contributing to land-use conversion.

“We buy a lot of paper,” said David Symonds, worldwide director of Print on Demand at Amazon. “It's important for us to make sure that the trees used to make that paper are sourced as responsibly as possible."

The approach is catching on: 150 loggers have already completed the training, accounting for roughly half of the timber harvested for the pilot mill. It’s a promising start to this work when suppliers, scientists, and loggers sit at the same table.

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