Optimal Management of a Multi-stand Forest/Wildlife System

Several studies have shown that when a single wildlife stock is influenced by several adjacent forest stands, through production of habitat and/or forage, the optimal harvest timing of those stands can be interdependent. This study adds a second possible dependency between trees and wildlife browsing by the wildlife species may damage valuable trees. The optimal joint management of trees and wildlife involves a tradeoff between enhancing the wildlife stock and protecting the tree resource from browsing damage. For a model of moose and pine in Norway, harvest of adjacent forest stands should be synchronized over time, for two reasons. Doing so maximizes the wildlife productivity boost that occurs while the forest stands are young and protects the young trees from overbrowsing by spreading out the browsing pressure over a larger area.