Intensified harvesting of forests - implications for enterprises related to wild and domestic ungulates.

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Norwegian authorities have stipulated a doubling in the production of bioenergy by 2020, in which the boreal forest has a great potential. In this project we will examine how such intensified harvesting will affect the enterprises that depend on the fores t as a foraging area for wild and domestic ungulates. These are enterprises that have high ecological, economic and cultural importance, but until now they have largely been overlooked in the expanding focus on forests as a source of bioenergy. The projec t will synthesize existing data with new material in a broad interdisciplinary collaboration between nationally and internationally recognized research institutions (Bioforsk, NTNU, UMB, NINA, SkogOgLandskap, Laval University - Canada, University of Hambu rg - Germany and James Hutton Institute - Scotland). The project is strongly user oriented, and will therefore also have a substantial participation from various user groups (livestock and forest owners). Our main goal is to provide both knowledge and too ls needed by the forest-based enterprises to stay within locally sustainable frames. We will accomplish this through three subgoals: 1) Quantify effects of intensified logging activity (including altered silviculture) on abundance and nutritional contents of forage plants for ungulates in the boreal forest (WP1); 2) Describe diet and habitat utilization of economically important forest-dwelling ungulates (moose, sheep, cattle) along ecogeographical gradients in varying forest landscapes, as well as damage levels from browsing and trampling on commercially valuables tree species (WP2); 3) Develop bioeconomic model tools that integrate economic and ecological factors to determine optimal use of the forest as a collective resource for enterprises related to wild or domestic ungulates and various forestry regimes (e.g. logging for timber or energy purposes) (WP3).