Abstract
Because forests provide us with various ecological goods and services indispensable for the humanity, it is imperative to find management approaches that will sustain their multiple environmental, economic and cultural values. Retention forestry, the practice of intentionally leaving important forest structure and organisms at harvest time, is a promising way to balance timber production and biodiversity conservation in managed forests. In contrast to traditional harvesting system, trees (snags and logs included) are selected with more emphasis on what is retained over the long-term as opposed to what is removed during harvesting. Retention forestry is being widely implemented on boreal and temperate forests in North America and northern Europe, as an alternative to clearcutting. However, retention forestry has not been prevailed in Asia including Japan and it has scarcely been applied in planted forests. To promote the use of retention forestry in Japan, we summarise aims, methods, the origin and current practices of retention forestry. We review field experiments conducted to test the effectiveness of retention forestry in the field of biodiversity, forestry efficiency and water and soil conservation. We then provide an overview of a large-scale field experiment called the Retention Experiment for Plantation Forestry in Sorachi, Hokkaido (REFRESH) initiated in 2013 to evaluate retention forestry in Sakhalin fir (Abies sachalinensis) planted forests in Hokkaido, northern Japan.
