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Abstract
There is a major trend in forest management that local managers are being replaced by entrepreneurs, who are often less place-dependent. Entrepreneurs are also more updated when it comes to scientific knowledge and national and international trends in forest values and functions, as well as knowledge about general planning and management concepts that have high value for tourism and recreation. Parallel with the observed changing management culture, there also seems to be an increased abstraction of forest values and functions in forest certification programmes. The article briefly presents some key aspects of Aldo Leopold's thinking that are of relevance for forest stewardship, and discusses these in relation to main forest stewardship trends in a Nordic forestry context. In a Nordic tradition, forest management and planning are deeply rooted in local management practice carried out by official local supervisors in cooperation with forest owners and other stakeholders. Local traditions and accumulated local knowledge over time were, in addition to updated scientific knowledge, important skills for local managers. Today's post-modern forestry includes complex multi-valued forest situations on different scales, which are even more complex and challenging to manage than the more utilitarian historical forest was.
Acknowledgements
The work was carried out under the project Urban Forest Values, financially supported by the Research Council of Norway and supported by ‘Nordic-Baltic Centre of Advanced Research on Forestry Serving Urban Societies. The authors are grateful to Hansjörg Küster and one anonymous reviewer for constructive comments on an earlier draft of the manuscript, and to Roland Gustavsson and Lars Helge Frivold for inspiration and interesting relevant discussion. Thanks are also due to Nicholas Clarke for revising the English.