Supporting Healthy Forest ecosystems for human well-being in forest Regions
Forests are complex ecosystems that store carbon, preserve soils and nurture many animal and plant species. But negligence and unsustainable forest management practices endanger their health and risk biodiversity loss. The HealthyForestRegions project develops concepts to strengthen the commitment of key policy stakeholders to better safeguard forest ecosystems. The partnership also tests new tools and solutions for the transition to ecosystem-based forest management in six regions

The main goal of the HealthyForestRegions (HFR) Project is the preservation and encouragement of healthy forest ecosystems in Central Europe to secure human well-being - now and in the future. The key actors to put that objective into practice are the policy- and decision-makers in certain forested regions. They are the people who have the opportunity and power to make a change and they are the once we aim to offer well-founded explanations and feasible solutions. Therefore, we brought to life a transnational project team with widely spread competences: 2 universities, 2 municipalities, 2 national forest services, 2 nature parks and 1 NGO. In close exchange and cooperation, the project partners work together on three different topics fields/work packages to achieve the project goal. All together, they aim at creating a basement for making decisions that secure forest health and thereby our future: 1. The first work package mainly is about raising awareness, spreading knowledge and implementing pilot actions with regard to anchor the value of regional forests among educational institutions, recreation and tourist organizations and the local population. 2. In the second subject area, a team of project partners deals with offering an alternative income generation for local and regional forest owners and managers instead of cutting and selling timber – a procedure that I often compromising forest health. In expert terms: Forest-based schemes of payments for ecosystem services (PES) are analyzed and developed. 3. The last work package strives for enabling regional policy- and decision-makers to assess the health of the regional forests and the impact the regional regulations and structures are having on it. Based on that, measurements to prevent and further expand forest health are compiled and evolved in a general strategy and a transferable HFR concept.