Modern continuous cover forestry traces roots to 17th-century European farm practices

For years, Continuous Cover Forestry (CCF) was thought to have started with an extensive international debate taking place at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. However, new research places its beginnings much earlier in the 17th- and 18th-century involving Central European farm forestry and the explicit management of individual trees rather than forest stands as a whole.

A recent study in Forest Ecosystems revisited the history of CCF and identified three key tradition lines that shaped its development:

1. Farm forestry (17th–18th century)

2. Individual-based silviculture (17th–20th century)

3. Academic debate on forestry (19th–20th century)

In Central Europe’s uplands, small farmers developed the single-tree selection system in the 18th century, focusing on the removal of individual trees and limiting each intervention to the harvesting of only a few mature trees thus more or less permanently perpetuating the old-growth-regeneration phase of natural forests. This system for the first time almost perfectly implemented the modern concept of biological rationalization, a low-impact, self-sustaining method requiring only occasional but optimized tree removals.

The second tradition line began in the 18th century, when foresters and forestry academics in France, Switzerland and subsequently in Germany shifted from managing forests by area to focusing on individual trees. This approach, called individual-based forest management, prioritized a select few so-called “frame trees” for special care that form the structural backbone of forest stands. The concept included the size-control principle, where trees are harvested based on individual maturity rather than location, and allowed large forest areas to be managed in smaller, more flexible units like tesserae in a large mosaic. Today, this method is a key part of modern CCF.

The third tradition line emerged towards the end of the 19th and in the early 20th century, as scholars in Europe and North America challenged the dominant system of Rotation Forest Management (RFM), which relied on monocultures and large-scale clear cutting.

Prominent forestry academics such as Karl Gayer in Germany and Arnold Engler in Switzerland promoted uneven-aged, mixed-species forests. Although their ideas were formalized in academic texts, they were often inspired by long-standing local practices such as the single-tree selection system. This debate laid the academic foundation for CCF, building on principles farmers and other academic schools had already established and been using for generations.

Today, foresters practicing CCF continue to reflect the roots of this concept, focusing on long-term forest resilience, diverse structure, and working with natural processes. However, some types of CCF are still difficult to apply in regions without a history of individual-tree management. “In countries lacking this tradition, forestry often defaults to rigid and inflexible area-based thinning, which may not be up to the challenge presented by rapid climate change,” the study notes. “Effective CCF requires targeted education and training.”

With climate change accelerating, the study highlights the urgent need to adopt the core principles of CCF — frequent but not too heavy interventions, biological rationalization including natural regeneration, and resilience. Whether rooted in 17th-century traditions or being the result of recent policy changes, the goal is the same: establishing and maintaining resilient forests that last for generations at minimum costs.