It is misleading, though, to compare wood-pasture habitats with natural woodlands, as the former are more a semi-natural formation treated in a similar manner to man-made agricultural and grassland habitats of low-intensity management. As with such habitats, traditional management practices have been abandoned or modified in much of the European pastoral woodland, or they have been substituted by more intensive management. Some would call wood-pasture an economic anachronism and its conservation a museum approach. However, the same could be said of almost all low-intensive agricultural habitats. Most conservationists AZD5363 purchase agree that while conservation of climax woodlands and ecosystems deserves to be given high priority, the diversity

of European cultural landscapes should also be maintained. As wood-pasture is still of economic relevance in parts of Europe, especially in the south and south-east, future development should be subject to nature conservation concern just like those of semi-natural grasslands and heathlands. Following an Interpretation Guide on Natura 2000 and forests (European Commission 2003), habitats of community importance listed in Annex I of the Habitats Directive can be separated into three functional groups (Barbier 2000): “habitats which occur

in environments that have always been marginal in economic terms and were never colonised by man, such AP26113 datasheet as riverine formations, dune areas, wet pockets in forests and active bogs; […] climax habitats, such as certain oak forests, beech forests and natural spruce forests, which have been exploited for timber and kept in a stable condition by management of the indigenous species; habitats which are mainly man-made landscapes or their transition to the climax vegetation, such as

heaths, wooded bogs, open (grazed) woodlands, natural grasslands or pastures. This leads to the conclusion that there is too little conclusive evidence to determine, with a reasonable degree of confidence, what would have been the exact CH5424802 order composition of potential natural vegetation cover on any given spot in Europe and that, not in many cases, the continuation of human intervention is absolutely essential to habitat conservation.” Representation Forests are defined as “(sub)natural woodland vegetation comprising native species forming forests of tall trees, with typical undergrowth, and meeting the following criteria: rare or residual, and/or hosting species of Community interest” (European Commission 2007). The Interpretation Manual gives the following additional criteria that were accepted by the Scientific Working Group (21–22 June 1993): forests of native species; forests with a high degree of naturalness; forests of tall trees and high forest; presence of old and dead trees; forests with a substantial area; forests having benefited from continuous sustainable management over a significant period. Wood-pastures do not meet the definition of forest habitats in the Interpretation Manual (Bergmeier 2008).