Toward practical conservation of fungal diversity: polypores reveal the history and guide the future of forest conservation

Abstract

National IUCN red lists are important information sources for assessing land use decisions from a biodiversity conservation perspective. If the assessments are detailed enough, they can be used as starting points for identifying the practical options for improving both targeted conservation management and land-use on a sectoral scale. We (1) assessed the IUCN red list status for all the 220 polypore species in Estonia, hemiboreal Europe; and (2) distinguished, for all 59 threatened species and in co-operation with practitioners, the most influential and feasible conservation options representing a broad range of approaches (site protection; prescriptions to land use; protection of individuals; active management; umbrella species). The red-list assessments clearly mirrored a predicted intensification of forestry (replacing historically low intensity of logging and largely natural regeneration), which were partly compensated by habitat improval within the established reserve system. We thus found that a small number of specific management decisions (particularly in the forestry sector) is affecting most of the sensitive polypore species. The map of appropriate conservation options for threatened species included many alternatives to the traditional strict site protection for well-known threatened species, e.g.: (1) woodland key habitat assessment in sites hosting threatened species (enables to protect the best habitats); (2) controlling removal of dead-wood in specific places in the surroundings of known strictly protected locations, or in known unprotected locations; (3) protecting the fruit body and the substrate item that likely hosts (most of) its mycelium in various environments used by humans. Such collection of options indicates the need for conservation frameworks explicitly designed for fungi. As a general conclusion, we recommend systematic and multi-disciplinary assessments of sensitive taxon groups in order to understand the full effects of land use decisions on biodiversity and for identifying specific problems in conservation management practices and legislation.