Nature conservation evaluation of strictly protected forest reserves : an exemplary application in Germany Zusammenfassung: Strictly protected forest reserves (SPFRs) in which forests are allowed to develop naturally were the focus of this study. In these reserves human interventions are excluded and it is expected that native and site specific biodiversity will be higher than in managed forests. This is mainly due to the space and time made available in the SPFRs for the development of forest structure and dynamic processes. Very little primeval forest remains in Central Europe to halt the loss of biodiversity. Therefore an aim of the German national strategy to protect biodiversity is to set aside 5% of the existing forest area by 2020 where it will be allowed to develop naturally. To find out if the aim has been reached quantitatively and qualitatively it is not enough to just sum up the areas of all SPFRs in Germany. Therefore the objective of this study was to develop a method that can qualitatively evaluate the capability of SPFRs to protect biodiversity on the national level and to evaluate the current SPFR system’s contribution to biodiversity protection. First a literature review was done which focused on conservation evaluations and the criteria and indicators that might be useful for evaluating unmanaged forest in Central Europe. Based on the review a framework for the selection of criteria covering the temporal spatial and functional dimensions of biodiversity evaluation was established. The criteria and indicators best suitable to evaluate the SPFRs were carefully selected. Afterwards a nature conservation evaluation concept was developed to determine how effective existing SPFRs contribute to the protection of biodiversity. Furthermore the identification of nature conservation targets was needed to do a complete evaluation of the prerequisites and to evaluate the contribution of SPFRs in Germany to protect biodiversity. Due to the criteria wise evaluation and the evaluation of the conservation targets gaps at different levels could be made visible and the effectiveness of the current SPFR system to conserve characteristic forest biodiversity was presented. The planning and selection of additional SPFRs based on the evaluation scheme can now be accomplished systematically and effectively