Woodland Key Habitats - biotope or business?

Synopsis

A woodland key habitat is an area with high natural values and great importance for the forest's plants and animals. There may be endangered or rare species here who need the area for their survival. The key habitats were registered by the Swedish Forest Agency between 1993 and 2021 – one of the country's largest nature inventories ever. The aim was to give the forest owners knowledge about the natural values so that they could protect them – but how did this really turn out? In this documentary, we examine the results – good and bad.

The documentary is the first episode of three in an examination of how Swedish forestry manages high natural values – mainly woodland key habitats – cores of high natural values that have been promised to be saved in order to fulfill environmental certification. This examination is done with the help of forest ecology scientists .

Objectives

To promote a discussion on how to fulfill these environmental certification promises to the market and the consumers in a more transparent way.