Forest Management Assessment of Biodiversity in the Taiga Zone

The need to preserve biodiversity has been recognized for decades, even centuries in North America, Europe and some other regions of the world. importance of preserving species and wildlife areas is emphasized in many cultures. Preservation of biodiversity in forest management, and especially in industrial logging, is one of the most important tasks of modern forestry. In many countries with the developed forest complex (Finland, Sweden, etc.), the task of preserving natural biodiversity has the same priority in the state forest policy as providing the forest industry with wood raw materials. The main requirements for the biodiversity preservation in Russia are enshrined in the National Standard (Forest Code of the Russian Federation, article 1) governing Voluntary Forest Certification. Organization of forest management in the Vologda region is carried out with consideration of significant aspects of biodiversity preservation. The research purpose is the forestry and economic assessment of biodiversity at the local level in the taiga zone (case study of the Vologda region). The assessment was carried out based on the inventory characteristic obtained in the field studies. The methodological provisions of E.A. Rai and S.I. Slastnikov were used to perform economic assessment of the preservation of key objects. A comparison of the costs of timber logging in biotopes and the income from its sale (in the case of logging stands in key biotopes with the subsequent sale of the resulting timber) showed significant differences between the objects under consideration. It is shown that according to the assortment structure, a significant part of the studied biotopes accrue to firewood. The cost of timber varies from 9.6 to 529.5 ths rubles. The amount of costs at different sites will vary significantly from 9.0 to 340.5 ths rubles due to the possible cutting of key biotopes. At the same time, a negative financial result is observed only at one site (a forest site with a habitat of Neckera pennata, which is included in the Red Data Book of the Vologda Region). The results demonstrate that the allocation of key sites and their further preservation is environmentally sound, but in some cases (when compared with the income from their cutting) is not commercially justified. For citation: Korchagov S.A., Khamitov R.S., Gribov S.E., Ivanova M.G., Belyakov D.V. Forest Management Assessment of Biodiversity in the Taiga Zone. Lesnoy Zhurnal [Russian Forestry Journal], 2021, no. 6, pp. 110–120. DOI: 10.37482/0536-1036-2021-6-110-120