Canada, Russia, Central and Eastern Europe, and most developing countries harvest above replacement rates in their available forest areas. Industrial wood plantations now supply just over 20 percent of fiber production. This share is expected to increase in future, but increased production from plantations will not necessarily decrease harvest rates in natural forests. However, some plantations in developing countries appear to have high planting failure rates. Immediate local-level impacts of logging on tropical forest biodiversity can be severe, but many groups of species appear to recover over time.
Different taxa vary in their requirement for large, intact areas of undisturbed forest.
Information status and needs Data on production volume and value are generally good, although estimates are involved for some developing countries. Information needs include spatial information at the subnational level on timber harvests, national-level data on the share of production from primary and secondary forest, and better monitoring of the extent and location of illegal logging. More economic analysis is required of the relationship between fiber prices, wood industry technologies, and the likely balance of supply from plantations and natural forests. Good forest inventory information is available for most industrial countries, but is incomplete for developing countries, where better information on growth rates, age and diameter class size, harvest rates, tree mortality and planting, and methods of harvesting is needed at the national and subnational levels. Reporting on plantation establishment and success rates is uneven in some developing countries.