Use of herbicides to control competing vegetation in young forests can increase wood volume yields by 50–150%. However, increasing use of herbicides in forest management has caused widespread concerns among the public and biologists about direct toxicity to wildlife and indirect effects through habitat alteration. Abundant research has indicated that forest herbicide treatments target biochemical pathways unique to plants, do not persist in the environment, and have few toxic effects when operationally applied. Herbicides affect forest biodiversity by creating short‐term declines in plant species diversity, altering vegetative structure, and potentially changing plant successional trajectories. For wildlife species, effects vary but generally are short‐term. Despite these findings, public opinion against forest herbicides often has limited or restricted their use, likely due to people's values associated with forests and a lack of technical knowledge. Future research efforts on relationships between forest herbicides and biodiversity should address landscape and site‐specific issues, be based on rigorous experimental design, be relevant to public concerns, include comparisons of herbicide treatments with alternative treatments excluding herbicides, examine use of chemical mixtures, and determine the social, economic, and possible long‐term ecological consequences of treatments.

Forestry in South Carolina has an annual economic impact of $23 billion and provides over 100,000 jobs statewide. Approximately 87% of forest lands in South Carolina is privately owned and faces shifts in ownership and management practices that may impact forest health. We conducted a bus tour that demonstrated the entire life cycle of a loblolly pine (Pinus taeda) forest from final harvest through forest maturity. The bus tour was aimed at increasing landowner knowledge and influencing the likelihood that they will implement forest management practices. An evaluation using multiple methods was conducted to determine whether the bus tour achieved its objectives. Qualitative and quantitative data converged to show that the forest management bus tour appeared to have been effective in increasing forest landowner knowledge and intent to implement forest management practices, thus potentially increasing forest health across the state. Study Implications: Despite extensive knowledge that is readily available to forest landowners, many landowners are still reluctant to implement forest management practices that lead to improved forest health. With over 87% of forest lands in South Carolina in private ownership, it is imperative to educate and encourage forest landowners to implement forest management practices that can help increase forest health. The outcome of a multiple methods evaluation of a forest management bus tour to educate landowners suggests that showing forest landowners management practices on the ground and explaining the associated terminology is likely to increase the adoption of forest management practices.

We reviewed sustainable forestry certification programs and the literature to identify metrics relevant to biodiversity considerations. Two certification approaches emerged, one based on an organization's management processes and one based on measurements of forest components against desired outcomes. However, there was little documentation of why certain metrics were chosen for either approach. A common theme in the literature was concern with the criteria for selecting metrics rather than recommendations of specific metrics. Biodiversity conservation plans and metrics should reflect landowner goals and address societal concerns as well as ecological considerations.

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