Focus Forestry on Genetic Diversity

Foresters are increasingly concerned about the "unknown unknowns:" pests and diseases that unpredictably arrive from overseas and sometimes devastate entire tree species, or unprecedented climatic anomalies. The best, if not the only, insurance against an unpredictable future is genetic variation within tree populations. Here we describe how the genetic diversity perspective can move from theory into practice at different levels of forestry. The first step is to recognize that genetic variation within a species is an irreplaceable heritage accumulated over millions of years.