Are there threshold numbers for protected forests?

Maintenance of forests biodiversity is intimately related on the one hand to the species and community-related ecological needs of flora and fauna living in the forest and on the other hand the disturbance regimes of the specific forest type. Populations of plants and animals need minimum biotopes for their ontogeny; for assuring their survival they depend on a minimum of connected suitable areas. Specific traits of forest types are based upon different disturbance regimes, ranging from small-scale internal processes (e.g. regeneration, growth, senescence, mortality, gap dynamics) generating normal forest cycles (i.e. regular sequences, e.g. regeneration, optimum, decay phases) to potentially chaotic and large-scale, frequently external, disturbances, e.g. fire, landslides, or beetle attacks. Forest protection may meet the needs of these very different demands by varied protected area networks going from small (>100 ha), medium (1000 ha) to large-scale reserves (National Parks, several thousands of ha). According to this triple protection concept not only graduated threshold numbers, but also threshold sizes and threshold areas for forest protection must be defined. To realize this concept the regional and local conditions (forest area, forest cover percentage, forest composition, socio-economic targets) must always be taken in consideration.