Abstract:Conservation Biology 41In an attempt to provide a state of the art of the effect of forest management on biodiversity, 42we performed a MA comparing the species richness of managed and unmanaged forests in 47Our MA provides basic ecological knowledge needed for conservation and ecologically 48 sustainable forestry. In this paper, we showed that forest management has a negative effect 49 on the biodiversity of forest dwelling species. Because we were aware of the limitations of 50 our MA, we used caution when discussing the results considering that: (i) the effect is 51 strongly heterogeneous between different taxa; (ii) there is a trend for recovery of biodiversity 52 once management has been abandoned; (iii) no strong conclusion on the effect of different 53 management types could be drawn from our data due to low replication number. The obvious 54 main conclusion of this paper was that research on the subject in Europe was scarce and 55 that more controlled studies may help answer the questions raised. 113always provided negative slopes, except for bryophytes and birds (see Table 3, p. 107). 114Finally, even if the effect of TSA was significant only for carabids, saproxylic beetles and 115 fungi, most of the negative slopes for taxa have much higher value than the slope for all 160(2002): this paper compares old growth with 15 years-old stands, which were not considered 161 as "young regeneration phases" nor "clearfelling stands" in our protocol. We assume that our 162 selection protocol was restrictive enough regarding the number of studies finally included in 163 our MA; if we had been more restrictive in our inclusion criteria (i.e. excluding young stands), 164we would have rejected this paper. 166 Conclusions 167The paper we published does not aim at influencing European forest and conservation 168 policies in any way, but to provide decision-making tools based on scientific facts. Both 169 managed and unmanaged forests are needed to preserve European forest biodiversity, but 170 since there are many managed forests and very few old-growth ones, a special effort should 171 be allocated to create protected reserves, as suggested by Paillet et al. (2010).

Biodiversity continues to decline in the face of increasing anthropogenic pressures such as habitat destruction, exploitation, pollution and introduction of alien species. Existing global databases of species’ threat status or population time series are dominated by charismatic species. The collation of datasets with broad taxonomic and biogeographic extents, and that support computation of a range of biodiversity indicators, is necessary to enable better understanding of historical declines and to project – and avert – future declines. We describe and assess a new database of more than 1.6 million samples from 78 countries representing over 28,000 species, collated from existing spatial comparisons of local-scale biodiversity exposed to different intensities and types of anthropogenic pressures, from terrestrial sites around the world. The database contains measurements taken in 208 (of 814) ecoregions, 13 (of 14) biomes, 25 (of 35) biodiversity hotspots and 16 (of 17) megadiverse countries. The database contains more than 1% of the total number of all species described, and more than 1% of the described species within many taxonomic groups – including flowering plants, gymnosperms, birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, beetles, lepidopterans and hymenopterans. The dataset, which is still being added to, is therefore already considerably larger and more representative than those used by previous quantitative models of biodiversity trends and responses. The database is being assembled as part of the PREDICTS project (Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems – http://www.predicts.org.uk). We make site-level summary data available alongside this article. The full database will be publicly available in 2015.

The PREDICTS project—Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems (www.predicts.org.uk)—has collated from published studies a large, reasonably representative database of comparable samples of biodiversity from multiple sites that differ in the nature or intensity of human impacts relating to land use. We have used this evidence base to develop global and regional statistical models of how local biodiversity responds to these measures. We describe and make freely available this 2016 release of the database, containing more than 3.2 million records sampled at over 26,000 locations and representing over 47,000 species. We outline how the database can help in answering a range of questions in ecology and conservation biology. To our knowledge, this is the largest and most geographically and taxonomically representative database of spatial comparisons of biodiversity that has been collated to date; it will be useful to researchers and international efforts wishing to model and understand the global status of biodiversity.

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