Aldo Leopold and stewardship: Lessons for forest planning and management in the Nordic countries?

摘要

There is a major trend in forest management that local managers are being replaced by entrepreneurs, who are often less place-dependent. Entrepreneurs are also more updated when it comes to scientific knowledge and national and international trends inforest values and functions, as well as knowledge about general planning and management concepts that have high value for tourismand recreation. Parallel with the observed changing management culture, there also seems to be an increased abstraction of forestvalues and functions in forest certification programmes. The article briefly presents some key aspects of Aldo Leopold's thinkingthat are of relevance for forest stewardship, and discusses these in relation to key forest stewardship trends in a Nordic forestrycontext. In a Nordic tradition, forest management and planning are deeply rooted in local management practice carried out byofficial local supervisors in cooperation with forest owners and other stakeholders. Local traditions and accumulated localknowledge over time were, in addition to updated scientific knowledge, important skills for local managers. Today's post-modernforestry includes complex multi-valued forest situations on different scales, which are even more complex and challenging to managethan the more utilitarian historical forest was.