Under the pressure of global demand for timber, one and the same forest area is transformed into four completely different worlds. In one, it is an empty chessboard of clear-cuts and young monocultures. In another, a dancing mosaic of old trees, fallen trunks, and dense, almost impenetrable undergrowth. The third is a neat balance of protected zones and selective logging, while the fourth is a forest that seems almost untouched, with the shade of canopies everywhere, rotting logs everywhere, and rare species everywhere. This is exactly what the result of the GreenFutureForest project looks like, where researchers tracked how pressure from the other end of the global supply and demand chain is refracted in decisions at the level of a single Swedish landscape covering an area of about one hundred thousand hectares.
It all began from afar—with global socio-economic scenarios that set the volumes of future timber harvesting under different developments. These forecasts were then brought down the scale ladder. The calculations were translated into national and regional plans for Sweden, Germany, and Switzerland. On the ground, four participants joined the process: the state-owned company Sveaskog, a cooperative association of private owners, a state environmental protection agency, and a nature conservation society. Each put forward their own list of priorities. Some prioritized maximum timber yield, others a balance of production and nature conservation, and still others the absolute protection of rare habitats. The same forest, under different management, became a completely different forest: a different stand structure, a different amount of deadwood, a different density of old trees.
The consequences were particularly noticeable for slow-dispersing species—those that need a stable habitat and cannot quickly relocate when the environment changes. Six species of fungi closely associated with decomposing wood almost disappeared in the intensive clear-cutting scenario: logs appeared in sufficient quantity, but they disappeared too quickly before the fungi could colonize them and complete their life cycle. The lungwort lichen, which is tied to specific tree species and the humid conditions under their canopies, fared better where more old trunks and the conditions it needs were preserved. Birds, contrary to expectations, reacted asynchronously: some species preferred sparse areas with low vegetation, others preferred impenetrable old-growth stands. Time proved to be a decisive factor that ordinary ecological suitability models simply ignore, focusing instead on immediate environmental conditions.
The economic side of the picture also turned out to be not so unambiguous. Clear-cutting sometimes yielded the highest projected profit in the short term, but with climate change or pest outbreaks—which have become more frequent in recent years—mixed forests and forests with continuous forest cover proved to be noticeably more resilient. For small owners, such an ecological safety cushion worked like natural insurance against collapse. The project showed an unexpected result: a diversified landscape—a combination of protected zones, different types of management, and targeted preservation of old trees and deadwood—reduces risks for both production profitability and biodiversity simultaneously.
The researchers cautiously refrained from offering the only correct scenario, an ideal solution that does not exist in nature. They gave the discussion participants a common language and a common tool to see where their own preferences lead, while using the same landscape, the same century-long planning horizon, and the same scientific models—in other words, one shared reality. Planning tools, such as the Swedish Heureka system, already allowed foresters to compare timber volumes and revenues; now, the living dynamics of species populations—their dispersal and extinction over time—have been added to them. As a result of discussions with stakeholders in Sweden and Germany, the debate became unexpectedly concrete: exactly where and on what area should deadwood be left for fungi, which specific tree species are important for specific lichens, and how to technically and economically combine nature protection and timber harvesting in one territory, instead of just making statements.
The GreenFutureForest project did not promise easy answers or convenient solutions—that is not its purpose. It only made visible what usually remains beyond the horizon of a single logging cycle: how today's forest management decisions will resonate in the ecosystem a century from now, and for whom exactly. It connected two scales that are usually kept separate: local forest management and global trends of the world market. When global demand pushes up harvesting volumes, the choice between the four futures of one forest ceases to be an abstraction and becomes a very concrete, almost tangible question about which species and which ecosystem functions we, living now, are prepared to preserve or lose as an inheritance.
