Forest restoration in practice – lessons learned from 12 demo sites

Gesche Schifferdecker on January 23, 2026

SUBERB demo sites

Restoring forests is as much a social, institutional, and economic endeavor as it is an ecological one. Across regions, landscapes, and governance contexts, restoration initiatives have generated a wealth of experience – what worked, what didn’t, and what must change to achieve lasting impact. This Lessons Learned booklet brings together insights from our 12 large-scale restoration sites, grounded in real-world practice rather than theory alone.

The lessons presented here are not prescriptive recipes. Instead, they highlight recurring patterns, critical success factors, and persistent bottlenecks encountered in forest restoration efforts. Together, they underline a central truth: successful restoration is a long-term process that depends on people, policies, and institutions working in concert with ecological systems.

By distilling these lessons, the booklet aims to support practitioners, decision-makers, and funders in designing restoration efforts that are durable, scalable, and context-sensitive – moving from isolated projects toward sustained landscape transformation.

Key Messages

  1. Forest restoration is a long-term commitment.
    Restoration cannot be achieved through one-off interventions; it requires sustained engagement, adaptive management, and long-term vision.
  2. Disturbance can be a catalyst for change.
    Catastrophic natural events – particularly in single-species monocultures – often expose structural vulnerabilities and can trigger more ambitious and transformative restoration efforts.
  3. Local communities are central to success.
    Communities are not only beneficiaries but essential partners in restoration. Meaningful involvement must begin early and be supported through continuous, trust-building processes.
  4. Finance and institutions matter – but gaps remain.
    Stable public funding and institutional support are fundamental. At present, voluntary private finance mechanisms fall short of delivering the scale and reliability needed for restoration.
  5. Demonstration sites accelerate learning.
    Practical demonstrations provide tested and transferable models, showing how restoration can work across diverse ecological and socio-economic contexts.
  6. Restoration costs are highly variable.
    Costs depend on landscape conditions, the intensity and complexity of measures, spatial fragmentation, and opportunity costs for land users.
  7. Scaling up requires policy alignment.
    Successful upscaling depends on aligning local practices and needs with broader policy frameworks and regulatory environments.
  8. Knowledge infrastructures ensure lasting impact.
    Systems for consolidating and sharing knowledge are essential to move beyond individual projects and to support institutions responsible for national restoration planning.

New SUPERB policy brief: forest restoration as a pillar of Europe’s climate and biodiversity action

Gesche Schifferdecker on December 17, 2025

SUBERB demo areas

Our newly released policy brief brings together scientific knowledge and hands-on experience from our 12 large-scale forest restoration initiatives across Europe, offering timely and practical guidance for policymakers, forest managers, and other key stakeholders.

The brief underlines that restoring forests is not a single action, but a long-term, multi-phase process. Effective restoration typically moves from assessing initial conditions and drivers of degradation, through planning and implementation, to long-term maintenance, monitoring, and evaluation. Success depends on flexibility, adaptive management, and strong engagement with multiple stakeholders, including forest owners, local communities, policymakers, and practitioners.

In the face of climate change, increasing disturbances, and shifting socio-economic demands, our policy brief stresses the need for future-oriented restoration targets. These should focus not only on biodiversity, but also on the ecosystem services forests provide – such as carbon storage, water regulation, and recreation – and the ecological processes that sustain them. Because the benefits of restoration often become visible only after decades, our brief highlights the critical importance of sustained funding for monitoring and adaptive management.

Drawing on insights from our 12 large-scale forest restoration demonstration areas across Europe, our experts identified shared challenges despite the diversity of forest types, ownership structures, and management traditions. Key issues include high ungulate browsing pressure that damages young trees and increases restoration costs, difficulties in engaging private forest owners – who manage around 60% of Europe’s forests – and constraints related to forest reproductive materials, such as shortages of climate-adapted seeds and seedlings.

To address these challenges, the brief puts forward clear and actionable recommendations. These include increasing flexibility in restoration objectives and timelines, adapting hunting and forest reproductive materials legislation, and strengthening monitoring of browsing impacts. Further recommendations suggest improving dialogue among forest managers, hunters, and communities, and supporting nurseries through long-term planning and investment. Our experts also call for contingency planning to cope with natural disturbances and for the strategic use of pioneer and climate-adapted species to build resilient mixed forests.

By translating lessons learned from real-world restoration efforts into policy-relevant recommendations, this policy brief provides a valuable roadmap for scaling up forest restoration across Europe. At a time when resilient forests are more important than ever, it offers concrete guidance to help turn ambitious restoration commitments into lasting outcomes.

Reference: Filipek, S., Jacobs, S., Nabuurs, GJ., Barnkob Lehrmann, M., Bílek, L., Campana, F., Cotten, L., de Dios, J., de Graaf, M., de Guerry, B., Đodan, M., Galić, Z., Gallego, R., García, R., Gómez Fernández, M., Granberg, Å., Hoch, T., Jactel, H., Janzen, L., Lastra González, D., Lindner, M., Locatelli, T., Marušák, R., Mijatović, L., Nicoll, B., Oleagordia, Í., Olsen, H., Orazio, C., Olrik, D. C., Raats, L., Saini, M., Schmidt, C., Svoboda, M., Svensson, J., Tognetti, R., Vacchiano, G., Zorić, M., Zotta, M., Schatzdorfer, E. (2025): Common challenges in implementing forest restoration: Experiences from 12 large-scale demonstration areas across Europe. Policy brief. https://doi.org/10.36333/rs15

Seeds of renewal: collaboration for climate-resilient forests in North Rhine-Westphalia 

Louisa Louisa Bouri-Saouter on November 20, 2025

Seeds of renewal: collaboration for climate-resilient forests in North Rhine-Westphalia 

Article written by Louisa Bouri-Saouter and Gesche Schifferdecker

When tourists come to visit Germany’s most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia, some wonder what has happened. Around the Lömecke Tower, an observation tower about 35 meters high in the Arnsberg Forest Nature Park, the once endless spruce forests are gone. Since 2018, about 133,000 hectares of spruce forest have been damaged by a series of calamities that triggered a snowball effect. Hurricane Friederike destroyed large areas of spruce forest and droughts weakened the trees further by reducing their resin production, a precious fluid which normally helps trees protect themselves against pests. Bark beetles, which mainly attack dying or weakened spruces, did not miss the opportunity. 

Larissa Janzen, coordinator for the German Demonstration Area in the EU project SUPERB, recalls in our recent workshop: “It happened very quickly. We even heard stories of forest owners losing their entire forests in just two weeks!” For forestry professionals who have witnessed entire landscapes transform in record time, the sound of bark beetles destroying the trees is still unforgettable. 

Calamities affected all altitudes, creating fragmented landscapes 

However, despite the initial shock, restoration efforts were quickly initiated. Under the SUPERB project, restoration actions have been carried out across 29 demonstration sites (around 34 hectares) with different types of ownership – private, municipal, church, and state.  The Wald und Holz team, the NRW lead partner in the SUPERB project, reports that 46% of the 133,000 hectares of calamity area have been reforested through natural regeneration of spruce and pine. “But it is important to note that these species might not be the best suited to face future conditions,” observes Larissa Janzen. 

That is why another key restoration action implemented in North Rhine-Westphalia is the adaptation of tree species composition to climate change. To achieve this, the team creates species distribution models that take into account factors such as water availability, soil nutrients, temperature, and vegetation. They can then identify which species (including species which are currently not growing in NRW) could potentially grow and survive under new climate conditions in the area. 

Larissa Janzen is showing the landscape transformation in record time around the Lömecke Tower 

However, miscalculations can occur, and the uncertainty regarding the potential impacts of certain tree species on local ecosystems remains. For this reason, multiple species are often combined to increase their overall chances of survival. 

Kilian Marx, a specialist in forest growth and introduced tree species at Wald und Holz, highlights the complexity of tree species selection: “Everyone talks about species first, but there are huge differences within the same species. For example, the Douglas fir has a coastal and an inland variant, but only the coastal one can be planted here because it can resist diseases such as the Swiss needle cast that would kill the inland type.” 

All findings from the Wald und Holz work on tree species selection are shared with forest owners. Through a GIS-based tool, owners can explore which tree species would best fit on their sites through recommendations based on RCP (Representative Concentration Pathways) future climate projections. They can then make their own decisions about their forest management in alignment with both the federal and state forest laws. 

Kilian Marx is talking to journalists during a field visit about the importance of tree species selection 

An important component of climate-adapted forest restoration – what experts now call prestoration – begins outside the forest itself, in places like the Jungermann regional forest nursery, the “Kinderschule des Waldes,” where every tree’s journey starts as a seed in soil. Here, the work stretches from careful seed selection to optimizing genetics to finally raising the young plants that will repopulate damaged landscapes. Much has changed, says Nursery owner Stefan Jungermann: “Where once 7,000 seedlings were planted per hectare, today only about 2,000 are set into the ground.” 

After the bark-beetle calamities, demand collapsed by more than 80% for water-hungry species, shifting attention toward mixed forests, though private forest owners still favor economically valuable conifers when state funding for broadleaves is lacking, Jungermann explains. The nursery cultivates seedlings on 8,000 square meters of harvest area, part of its total 130-hectare operation, and must adapt constantly to the risks of climate extremes. One wet winter wiped out an entire cohort of oak seedlings – 300,000 lost as acorns fouled in saturated soil. Late frost is even more dangerous: in February, if temperatures drop, the whole team wakes before dawn to spray the young plants, encasing them in a protective shell of ice. With the state of NRW providing 17 million euros for reforestation in 2025 – less the following year – every decision counts, from choosing between equally priced oak and larch (though oak is far costlier to maintain) to experimenting with “trendy” newcomers like sweet chestnut, atlas cedar, and Western Red Cedar. There is no single “tree of the future,” the Jungermann family insists; resilience will come from diversity and matching species to their sites.  

Tourism, too, is undergoing a quiet transformation as the Sauerland landscape changes. Although visitor numbers have not declined, the region’s identity is shifting: the dense, seemingly endless spruce forests that once defined the area’s “green” image have largely disappeared – “revealing, in hindsight, how strongly monocultures had shaped the visual character of the landscape”, says Rouven Soyka, press officer at Sauerland Tourism. With 5,000 km², Sauerland still contains many intact and diverse forest areas, yet the contrast between damaged and healthy stands is unmistakable to hikers and holidaymakers. Climate change is also reshaping winter tourism, as snow reliability continues to drop and ski seasons shrink. To address public concerns and maintain transparency, the city of Arnsberg, foresters and tourism managers together have intensified the outreach, offering guided tours and organizing citizen planting days. While these volunteer plantings contribute little to large-scale restoration, they have proven invaluable for public engagement, helping visitors and residents alike understand the painstaking, decades-long process of rebuilding a resilient forest – and the new forms of beauty and biodiversity that may emerge. 

In this careful choreography between climate, species, and human stewardship, the Wald und Holz team and their diverse local partners stand together at the quiet but crucial beginning of tomorrow’s forests. 

How to strengthen the European forest carbon sink integrating active restoration and adaptation to climate change

Shan Gao on December 12, 2024

Climate change is progressing faster than tree species can adapt or migrate to regions with more suitable climates. Geographic barriers and fragmented habitats caused by land use hinder the natural spread of trees, making passive restoration efforts — those with little or no human involvement — less effective.

A new policy brief that SUPERB published in collaboration with our project partner European Forest Institute, explains how active forest restoration combined with assisted migration of more climate-adapted tree species and populations, has the long-term potential to enhance carbon sequestration significantly compared to restoration efforts without assisted migration. Assisted migration means aligning tree species and populations to the climate to which they are adapted. This measure is a significant element of the so-called “Prestoration” approach SUPERB is taking, which stands for a combination of restoration and climate change adaptation of forests.  

The policy brief also looks at what policymakers can do to effectively implement and potentially refine the EU Nature Restoration Regulation. The authors point out that realistic restoration targets should be set so they can be achieved despite ongoing climate change, and adaptation should also be pro-actively tackled within the Natura 2000 system.  

Full reference: 
Chakraborty, D., Schüler S.,  Ciceu, A., Bauhus, J., Bou Dagher, M., Đodan, M., Kramer, K., Svensson, J., Schatzdorfer, E. 2024. How to strengthen the European forest carbon sink through prestoration: integrating active restoration and adaptation. Policy Brief 11. European Forest Institute. https://doi.org/10.36333/pb11

Featured image: SUPERB demo area in Vysočina and North Moravia, Czech Republic (photo: Shanqing Gao)

Incentivizing biodiversity restoration in European forests: Should we pay forest owners for implementing actions or for delivering results?

Charlotte Marie Süring on July 11, 2024

Figure 1: Action-based indicators and their result-based counterparts analyzed in the study

Article written by Charlotte Süring

As a means to promote forest restoration, the EU Forest Strategy for 2030 explicitly encourages EU member states to implement payment schemes to support private forest owners and managers in the provision of ecosystem services such as biodiversity. While some examples of such schemes already exist in the forest sector, they are more frequently found in the agricultural context, where they have been subject to scrutiny in the past years. Often suffering from low participation rates and limited ecological outcomes, many of them have been ineffective in addressing the biodiversity decline. To ensure higher biodiversity outcomes, one solution proposes to realign the schemes’ incentive structures by making payments to landowners conditional on the achievement of desired biodiversity targets, rather than the implementation of prescribed actions.

While such result-based schemes would be riskier for forest owners and likely more costly to implement, the scientific literature suggests that they could nonetheless be more cost-effective than their action-based counterparts. In the SUPERB finance work package, we are interested in finding out whether this is indeed the case in a European forest context. We therefore administered a choice experiment to large samples of Danish and Finnish forest owners, in which we asked respondents to make choices between different hypothetical action- and result-based biodiversity contracts.

Figure 2: In around 60% of the cases in which respondents indicated their willingness to sign up for a proposed biodiversity contract, they would enroll all of their land

First results of this ongoing study were presented to a group of key stakeholders as part of a SUPERB seminar on July 4th. Our preliminary results suggest that forest owners require around 40-70% more compensation (on average) to enter result-based schemes, depending on the specific biodiversity objective. We also find that design considerations such as including multiple payment thresholds or paying forest owners in instalments rather than lump sum payments would allow policymakers to reduce compensation levels without affecting participation rates. Forest owners’ decisions on what share of their land to enroll in the schemes seems to be governed by their perceived ability to achieve the contract objectives, as well as forest owner characteristics, but less so by the scheme design. In particular, we find that owners with larger properties, more coniferous forest, larger shares of land used for timber production, and lower education levels tend to be willing to enroll less of their land. We plan to use these findings in an optimization model which will hopefully provide some insights on how to design forest biodiversity schemes most cost-effectively. Stay tuned!

Turning Over a New Leaf: Replanting Quercus Robur with Lessons Learned

superbadmin on April 8, 2024

Within the SUPERB project, a noteworthy advancement was achieved last week in the Serbian part of the Cross-border demo area, marking a pivotal moment in the ongoing replanting efforts in Biosphere Reserve Gornje Podunavlje. This latest phase of our activities within the SUPERB project not only highlights the adaptability and resilience of the conservation efforts in Gornje Podunavlje but also emphasizes the importance of learning from past challenges. By acknowledging the impact of severe drought conditions on the initial attempt to establish Quercus robur stand, the current approach is adapted to ensure greater success. Public Enterprise Vojvodinašume is currently undertaking a remarkable endeavour, with over 50 workers diligently planting 94,000 Quercus robur seedlings at the restoration site. As part of their efforts for success, new fencing is being installed to protect against negative impacts from wildlife, while each seedling is being treated with hydrogel to prevent the loss of soil moisture, showcasing the ongoing commitment to successful restoration. Through ongoing practices, we continue to evolve, striving to achieve our overarching goal of enhancing biodiversity and ecosystem resilience in this ecologically significant region.

Brown Bear Protection, Rural Development and Community Empowerment 

superbadmin on March 4, 2024

Stand for chestnut plantation

Success in El Bierzo: In an Ecological Restoration Stakeholder Workshop, stakeholders reached consensus on brown bear protection, rural development and community empowerment. The Carracedelo municipality hosted this meeting to show the options of ‘exporting’ the work carried to improve the habitat of the brown bear in El Bierzo to similar territories. 

On almost 140 hectares, reaching over six municipalities, in the region of El Bierzo (León, Spain), a series of actions will be carried to restore and improve the living conditions of the residents of the area. This refers both to the flora of the region and, in this particular case, also its fauna, paying special attention to one of the most emblematic species of the area, the brown bear. The next stage is to evaluate the upscaling options of the plan, which was studied in a participatory process with the main stakeholders in the region. 

Cesefor and the Junta de Castilla y León, the two entities that manage SUPERB’s demo area in Castilla y León in SUPERB, introduced the restoration plan and its upscaling options, as well as the SUPERB project, on February 6 in Carracedelo within the framework of a stakeholder workshop. 

About thirty people participated in this meeting, which was held at the facilities of Quality Products from El Bierzo. The purpose of the organisers was to ensure that all the socio-economic agents of the territory were represented, from civil society to professionals from the business world, forest management, education or tourism, among other fields. 

Rocío Gallego, SUPERB coordinator at Cesefor, presented some of the strengths of this project. ”Our demonstration areas encompass entire socio-ecological systems, protecting and restoring them, while taking into account people’s needs for ecosystem services and benefits.” She also emphasized that “our goal is to find best practices and gather practical and scientific knowledge on the success of forest restoration and aggregate it for implementation.” 

Stand for potential food provision of brown bear (photo: Cesefor)

Cesefor’s forestry officer Darío Arias, presented the restoration project in the pilot area, which was developed by Cesefor, the Territorial Environmental Service of León and the General Directorate of Natural Heritage and Forest Policy of the Junta de Castilla y León. This project, among other actions, has included the implementation of measures to improve the habitat of the brown bear by planting species suitable for feeding the bear, increasing the production of acorns and the creation of mixed forests. ”We will also carry out forestry activities to reduce forest fuel and decrease the risk of fires. Furthermore, we will promote chestnut plantations with the aim of revitalizing rural areas and their development and involving the local population in the management of these forests,” said Arias in his speech. 

Stand for future chestnut plantation (photo: Cesefor)

Javier de Dios, forest ecology officer at Cesefor and co-leader of the SUPERB work in Spain, introduced the proposal for the upscaling plan for all these actions (i.e. the ‘export’ of this model to other areas of similar properties). He did that based on a participatory process in which all the attendees were involved.  But before pointing out the most feasible scenario for the upscaling, covering the real and potential distribution area of the bear in Zamora, León, Palencia, Burgos and Soria, Javier emphasized the main political, economic, social, legal and technical barriers that have to be faced. 

Widespread consensus on a broad range of topics of interest 

De Dios had a major role in participatory process in which all the attendees were involved. For the organisers of the workshop, this participatory process “has been very useful not only to know first-hand the opinion of those who live in and of these territories, but also to include their contributions in the upscaling plan (expansion of the Cantabrian brown bear habitat restoration project)”. 

Among the main conclusions of the meeting, both the imminent tender of the restoration project and the great participation of all the attendees have to be mentioned. The stakeholders highlighted the need to promote association, cooperation, land concentration and tax incentives for forest owners. They also required actions to disseminate forestry work and the problems associated with the presence of the bear for the rural and urban population. Finally, they emphasized the need for establishing suitable financial systems that cover long-term monitoring and maintenance after restoration actions. 

The necessity to involve the private sector in restoration and maintenance actions, potential payments for ecosystem services, streamlining procedures bear damage,  the need for a regulation in the Forestry Law and to link management plans to specific regulations (and not to guidelines) were other topics on which the attendees agreed. 

Before concluding, all attendees were again thanked for their participation, and they were invited to attend the third workshop, which will be held in May 2025 and will address the results of implementation of restoration activities in the SUPERB demonstration area in El Bierzo. 

What actions would be needed to restore European forest ecosystems?

superbadmin on December 15, 2023

German demo area needs to be restored after bark beetle damage

In early 2024, the European Parliament will have a final vote on the ‘Nature Restoration Law’ (NRL), a hotly debated regulation that aims to halt and reverse biodiversity loss in Europe. An international team of scientists, led by Daniel Herring (University Duisburg-Essen), with contributions from European Forest Institute and Wageningen University and Research in the framework of the SUPERB project has investigated the prospects of the new regulation: how effective is this law going to be and what needs to happen? The article Securing success for the Nature Restoration Law was published on 15 December in the scientific journal Science. Even though the law has been weakened in the negotiation process, the restoration measures are already starting. 

The ‘Nature Restoration Law’ (NRL) requires member states of the EU to implement restoration measures on at least 20 per cent of land and marine areas by 2030, and in all ecosystems in need of restoration by 2050. The NRL already took various hurdles: most recently, it was approved by the EU Parliament’s Environment Committee, after delegations of the Parliament and the Council of Europe agreed the final text.

But will the regulation really achieve its aims? The authors, including scientists that lead large European projects on nature restoration and biodiversity, analysed experiences with other European environmental directives and policies, and evaluated the prospects of the NRL to be successful. 

“The NRL has successfully overcome numerous challenges that typically impede the implementation of European policies and regulations. Regardless of the parliamentary decisions expected in January, urgent restoration efforts are already underway in many locations.” says Gert-Jan Nabuurs, Professor at Wageningen University and Research (WUR), and co-coordinator of SUPERB. “The regulation saves time as it does not need to be transposed into national law, and an implementation framework and goals are clearly laid out.” At the same time, national implementation will be crucial for the NRL’s success. “The scientific community is actively generating extensive knowledge on landscape-level nature restoration, approaching it through different lenses, including governance, community engagement, species selection for the future, and ensuring sustainable financing for restoration”, emphasizes Magda Bou Dagher Kharrat, SUPERB coordinator and Principal Scientist at European Forest Institute. “This will help European countries in preparing their national restoration plans.”

“Key for the implementation will be the cooperation of nature restoration with landowners and land users, in particular with managers and practitioners who directly work in the field”, says Silke Jacobs (WUR) who is part of SUPERB as well. “These managers and practitioners are crucial for long term maintenance of the forest. Only then forests will perform better for biodiversity, CO2 sequestration and wood provision in the long term”. Restoration takes time.

SUPERB is an excellent example of the European restoration initiatives aiming at large scale forest restoration, with several European countries implementing restoration measures. Given the variety of stressors which weakened the state of European forests over the past decades; ranging from wildfires, windstorms, bark beetle calamities to fragmentation and intensive plantations; the selection of appropriate restoration actions is crucial to succeed. However, essential part of the project is also the upscaling of the restoration actions. “Engagement and willingness of national and regional institutions, as well as involvement of private funding sector will allow to support and contribute to not only the nature restoration but it would also fulfil the goals of National Forest Strategies”, says Sara Filipek from WUR, working also on SUPERB project.   

Overall, the authors of the article provide a positive outlook for the NRL, but warn that ambitious national implementation and cooperation will eventually determine the success of nature restoration in Europe.

The NRL is part of the Green Deal and is, amongst others, intended to fulfil the international biodiversity agreement of Kunming-Montreal, according to which at least 30 percent of degraded ecosystems must be restored.

Further information: 

Daniel Hering et al, Securing success for the Nature Restoration Laws. Science 382, 1248-1250 (2023). DOI: 10.1126/science.adk1658

Webinar “Unveiling the Future of Christmas Trees in the Era of Climate Change”

superbadmin on December 6, 2023

Navigating Forest Disturbances, Restoration, and Adaptation

In our upcoming Forest Restoration Webinar with IUFRO‘s Task Force ‘Transforming Forest Landscapes for Future Climates and Human Well-Being’ on 13th December 4pm CET, our speaker Christina Dollinger (Technical University Munich) will introduce us to her research related to the Restoration of mountain forests in the Berchtesgaden National Park. Christina will elaborate on short- and long-term success in the face of climate change and share insights from her research combining field data and simulation modelling.

Register here to attend!

SUPERB presented to new forest research network in Germany

superbadmin on November 16, 2023

SUPERB Demo area – North Rhine Westphalia – SUPERB (forest-restoration.eu) lead Catharina Schmidt introduced the project work on October 30th and 31st in Arnsberg, Germany, to a group of ca. 40 scientists and practitioners from various organisations based in NRW. Aim of the “Forest Research NRW“ event was to discuss the latest scientific results and practical challenges related to how we can better prepare and adapt our forests in times of climate change. The agenda of the symposium included topics such as the opportunities of digitalization in the forest for climate change adaptation, the performance of forest soils, questions of forest governance as well as reflections on how to combine climate protection and timber construction. The event was organized on the initiative of the NRW Ministry of Agriculture and Consumer Protection with the objective to establish a new forest research network in NRW, formally announced by NRW Minister for Agriculture and Consumer Protection Silke Gorißen on October 30th.

The workshop also included an excursion to SUPERB’s demo sites in Arnsberg, where participants learned about ongoing forest restoration measures: reforesting beetle-infected spruce forests into more diverse, mixed-forest ecosystems by using a combination of natural regeneration and replanting.