Silvano Fares and colleagues' recommendations for managing Europe's forests to promote resilience and carbon storage (Nature 519, 407–409; 2015) seem to overlook the implications for forests as natural ecosystems and run counter to biodiversity sustainability guidelines (D. B. Lindenmayer et al. Biol. Conserv. 131, 433–445; 2006). These must be taken into account if we are to meet the Convention on Biological Diversity's Aichi targets and the European Union's 2020 target for halting biodiversity loss.

For example, managing a forest's composition of tree species in favour of productive, gale-resistant and disease-tolerant species or genotypes will be at the expense of hundreds of native woody species and their rich biota of insects and fungi. Harvesting trees at shorter intervals to promote carbon storage would endanger old forests and veteran trees, along with the birds, bats, beetles, fungi and lichens they support. And removing woody debris to prevent wildfires would kill the wealth of species that thrive on dead and decaying wood.