A companion modelling approach applied to forest management planning

To assist the Société Civile des Terres du Larzac (SCTL) in its effort to develop alternative forest management plans, a group of researchers and extension officers proposed applying a companion modelling approach. The objective was to support forest owners and livestock farmers while they worked out a solution to their forest management problems. The approach was based on the co-construction and use of an agent-based model providing a shared representation of the current management of farms and providing multiple view points on alternative forest management scenarios. The validation of the model allowed the development of a shared representation of the territory. The use of the model as an exploratory tool empowered local stakeholders to elaborate alternative management strategies for their renewable resources (forage, timber, firewood). It also expanded the discussion on forest management to a multi-scale level where managers assumed progressively a role of land administrators. When playing this role, they compared their forest policy orientations and forest harvesting decisions with farmers’ individual situations and interests. Participants became aware of how spatial and temporal scales of management overlap and they progressively worked out a compromise between livestock breeding concerns of farmers and forest dynamics concerns of SCTL managers.