The EU Member States have made a commitment to stop not later than by 2010 the loss of biodiversity.
Forests play a key role in improving biodiversity. Tax payers will get maximum biodiversity for their money by introducing licensing arrangements: the Government asks forest owners to offer projects at a fixed price and then selects those projects that seem to provide most biodiversity for that price.

This will create a market for biodiversity and it will make it attractive for forest owners to improve natural values. This method is already applied in Denmark for the purpose of creating untouched forests.
Unfortunately the EU Commission has not adopted this kind of logic. The Commission does not allow forest- and land owners to make money from subsidized projects. Three current examples illustrate these problems:
Under the Rural Development Programme only direct costs and losses of voluntary conservation and improvement of natural values are compensated.
This means that these projects cannot compete with traditional production in the areas concerned so the projects come to nil.
Under the EU Habitat Directive forest- and landowners face the risk of financial losses for preserving rare species. This creates naturally an incentive to avoid such species on one’s land.
When planting deciduous trees financed under the Rural Development Programme only so few trees may be planted that no quality production is possible. This decreases forest owners motivation to plant deciduous trees, which however offer more biodiversity.
The Danish Forest Association requests the Danish Government and Members of the EU Parliament to tell the Commission to stop conservative thinking; exchange the whip for the carrot and make forest owners professional co-operators in saving biodiversity.
Biodiversity must become a good business. That serves everybody's interests.