There is currently a growing concern that biocultural heritage is threatened in many landscapes. This paper focuses on biological cultural heritage, broadly meaning biological cultural traces that are considered as heritage, but leaving out other aspects of the biocultural heritage concept. An operational definition of biological cultural heritage (BCH) is suggested, based on niche construction theory: “biological manifestations of culture, reflecting indirect or intentional effects, or domesticated landscapes, resulting from historical human niche construction”. Some factors that influence recognition of BCH are discussed, using a comparison between Swedish open to semi-open vs. forested landscapes. While the former landscapes are generally associated with biological cultural values, BCH is generally over-looked in forests. Two main reasons for this are suggested: loss of cultural memory and a perception of forests as wilderness. A conclusion is that recognition of BCH is essential for guiding development of biological conservation programmes in forests, irrespective of whether the conservation goal is to focus on culturally impacted forests or to conserve what is considered as close to pristine forests. Furthermore, recognising BCH in forests will promote interest and learning of the history of forests and their values and will be informative for developing conservation programmes for all biota in forests, not only those that historically were favoured by culture. Hence, there is no inherent conflict between preserving relatively untouched forests and those with remaining traces of pre-industrial forest management. The recognition of BCH in forests will inspire and promote further integration of cultural and natural heritage research.

Conservation biology, Domesticated landscapes, Niche construction, Semi-natural grasslands, Wilderness, Wood pastures

There is currently a growing interest in conservation of cultural landscapes, motivated by a concern that values associated with these landscapes are eroding (e.g. Rössler 2006, Harrop 2007, UNESCO 2008, 2014, Agnoletti and Rotherham 2015). Cultural landscapes represent relationships amongst people, events and places through time (Taylor and Lennon 2011). They are “combined works of nature and man” (UNESCO 1972, Article 1) or, as stated in the European Landscape Convention (Council of Europe 2000), “an area as perceived by people whose character is the result of the action and interaction of natural and/or human factors”. A concept that has attracted a lot of attention in this context is biocultural diversity and heritage incorporating and integrating both cultural and biological (and abiotic) aspects of landscapes (e.g. Pretty et al. 2009, Gavin et al. 2015, Rotherham 2015, Bridgewater 2017).

Biocultural diversity refers to the interface and relationship between biological and cultural diversity (e.g. Maffi 2005, Agnoletti and Rotherham 2015, Lennartsson et al. 2018). Although there are other related concepts, for example “ecodiversity” (Naveh 1998) and “ethnobiology” (Wolverton et al. 2014), biocultural diversity has become dominating in the discourse linking different aspects of cultural diversity with use of natural resources and for identifying how these links promote and maintain both cultural and biological diversity (Lennartsson et al. 2018).

Biocultural heritage is defined by UNESCO (2008, page 8) as “living organisms or habitats whose present features are due to cultural action in time and place”. Cultural landscapes across the world, considered as outstanding, are protected under the UNESCO World Heritage Convention, particularly focusing on (i) clearly defined landscapes designed and created intentionally by humans, (ii) organically evolved landscapes, such as agricultural landscapes and (iii) associative cultural landscapes, e.g. religious and sacred landscapes (Rössler 2006, pages 335-336). UNESCO (2008, page 9) recognises several “areas of interdependencies” between biological and cultural diversity, thus forming the basis of biocultural heritage: language and linguistic diversity, material culture, knowledge and technology, modes of subsistence (which includes land use), economic relations, social relations and belief systems.

Biocultural heritage is often associated with indigenous people (e.g. Maffi 2005, Pretty et al. 2009, Wolverton et al. 2014, Gavin et al. 2015) and local rural communities (e.g. Galluzzi et al. 2010, Dahlström et al. 2013, Otero et al. 2013, Agnoletti et al. 2015, Cohen et al. 2015, Vallejo et al. 2015, Rangel-Landa et al. 2016). However, some authors suggest that the concept should be applied more broadly, for example, as expressed by Cocks and Wiersum (2014, pages 733–734) that biocultural heritage “…should be extended to include the values and associated practices concerning biodiversity of any kind of either traditional/rural or modernized/urban societies.” This view is expressed also in the European Landscape Convention (Council of Europe 2000) which recognises “landscapes that may be considered outstanding as well as every-day and degraded landscapes”. Furthermore, biocultural heritage usually reflects something “old and traditional”. However, although the material basis of what is considered heritage often has deep historical roots, the meaning and value people assign to material manifestations of culture are considered constantly changing and renegotiated in the current society (e.g. Hobsbawn 1983, Smith 2006, Tilley 2006, Graham and Howard 2008, Storm 2008, del Mármol and Vaccaro 2015, Braaksma et al. 2016, Stenseke 2016). This also holds for biological manifestations of heritage, for example, features of species, species distributions or vegetation patterns, understood as having originated or having been favoured historically, e.g. by past management regimes. Furthermore, as biological manifestations of cultural history are living, they may survive, unchanged or transformed, although the historical cultural context where they originated has vanished (Eriksson 2016).

Given these considerations, there is a need for discussing and clarifying what kind of biological features that are recognised as heritage. At first, we should recognise that human impacts always leave biological traces. This is unavoidable and ubiquitous. Some of them are highly valued and some are not, because they are not recognised or because they are considered as degraded nature, uninteresting or ugly. Henceforth in this paper, a distinction is made, using the term “biological cultural heritage” as broadly meaning biological cultural traces (species, vegetation etc.) that are considered as heritage, but leaving out other aspects of culture (e.g. language, religion etc.) that are also part of the biocultural heritage concept.

The objectives of this paper are twofold. Firstly, an operational definition of the concept biological cultural heritage is suggested. Secondly, some factors that influence how biological cultural heritage is identified and perceived are discussed, using a comparison between two components of rural landscapes in Sweden: (i) open and semi-open landscapes with remains of (what are viewed as) traditionally managed semi-natural grasslands and (ii) forested landscapes. The rationale for this choice of landscape components is that open rural landscapes are generally associated with cultural values, whereas forests largely have become excluded from being seen as harbouring values related to cultural heritage. The objective is to try answering the question why this is so and thereby identifying some of the challenges associated with assigning biological features as heritage.

Biological cultural heritage (henceforth BCH) has been defined as: “…ecosystems, habitats and species which have originated, developed or been favored by human utilization of the landscape and whose long-term persistence and development is dependent on, or favored by management.” (Swedish National Heritage Board 2014). This definition is similar to, but more specific than the UNESCO (2008) definition of biocultural heritage as “living organisms or habitats whose present features are due to cultural action in time and place”, the latter leaving out any reference to long-term persistence. Both these definitions are rather broad and avoid any specification of the time-depth of the origin of the cultural actions, i.e. the human utilisation of the landscapes. Even features such as a clear-cutting in a production forest would be BCH according to these definitions.

Human cultural impacts always leave biological traces. A starting point is asking what kinds of biological cultural traces there are. I suggest we can recognise three levels of biological cultural traces, distinguished by an increasing magnitude of interaction with culture through history.

The first level is indirect effects of human actions. All kinds of human activities influence other species indirectly, by favouring some species, for example, by creating suitable habitats for them or by disfavouring some species, for example, by destroying their habitats. This is trivial, but may not preclude interesting biological legacies from human history. In a study of bracken (Pteridium aquilinum) in Finland, Oinonen (1967a) associated clones of different size with various war episodes going back to the 14th century. One example was an unusually large bracken clone, which Oinonen suggested was spatially associated with the raiding of a stronghold close to the present-day city of Turku in the year 1318. The proposed mechanism behind this and other examples of spatial associations between bracken clones and war episodes is that war promotes fires and fires promote recruitment of bracken. Of course, it was not the intention of the war episodes to promote bracken. However, given that we have some knowledge of the association between bracken clones and Finnish war history at the specific sites, we may regard these bracken clones as BCH.

The second level is biological cultural traces that reflect human intentionality affecting single species or groups of species. For example, Rotherham (2007) mentions what he calls botanical indicators of antiquity and disturbance, such as “working trees”. For example, in former wooded meadows, trees bear signs of earlier pollarding and coppicing (e.g. Hæggström 1992, 1998, Hartel et al. 2015). Other examples of biological cultural traces reflecting human intention are remnants of fruit trees or other plantations close to no longer existing farms and cottages (e.g. Gunnarsson 2010, Karlsson Strese et al. 2014). We may regard all these biological cultural traces as BCH.

Note that the second level partly incorporates the first level. Human intentionality, for example, in creating a garden or a wooded meadow, unavoidably implies indirect effects for other species. For example, the exceptional species richness of semi-natural grasslands such as wooded meadows with a long management history (Wilson et al. 2012, Eriksson and Cousins 2014) reflects both intentionality and indirect effects. We may regard the patterns of species composition and diversity, per se, in these former meadows, as BCH.

The third level is when the biological cultural traces are the result of long-term reciprocal interactions between culture and the biological communities that serve as a basis for the culture. These interactions create what has been called domesticated landscapes, broadly meaning whole landscapes transformed by humans to support society, but also affecting many other species (e.g. Terrell et al. 2003, Erickson 2006, Kareiva et al. 2007, Widgren 2012, Eriksson et al. 2018). Domesticated landscapes can be seen as the result of niche construction, a process whereby organisms, through their activities, modify their own and other species’ niches (Odling-Smee et al. 2003). When humans are involved in a niche construction process, culture becomes one of the key factors (Kendal et al. 2011), creating a cultural niche (Laland and O’Brien 2012). Theory of human niche construction has been productive in understanding many features of human management and land-use, for example, global species distributions (e.g. Boivin et al. 2016), domestication of plants and animals (e.g. Smith 2016), development of infields (Eriksson and Arnell 2017) and for understanding the present anthropogenic biosphere in general (Ellis 2015).

Incorporating domesticated landscapes resulting from niche construction in a definition of BCH specifically stresses that biological cultural traces have or have had (previously during history) a great importance and meaning for people. Domesticated landscapes also relate to what has been termed “sociotechnical transition pathways” (Geels and Schot 2007). Furthermore, over time and due to the reciprocal interactions between culture and biological communities, both cultural and biological features have developed and changed. For example, management practices change over time, in response to and influencing the structure and composition of biological communities. What characterises this third level, domesticated landscapes, is that it encapsulates a “wholeness” of the environment influenced by and influencing human society. As such, it partly incorporates the previous two levels. Domesticated landscapes derived from niche construction processes include intentionality and unintended indirect effects on various species.

I thus propose the following definition of Biological Cultural Heritage (BCH): biological manifestations of culture, reflecting indirect or intentional effects or domesticated landscapes, resulting from historical human niche construction (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Biological cultural heritage defined as biological manifestations of culture, reflecting indirect or intentional effects or domesticated landscapes, resulting from historical human niche construction.

However, we need to clarify a critical question related to the definition. Heritage is not a value-neutral concept. As mentioned above, the meaning and value people assign to material manifestations of culture may change over time (e.g. Smith 2006, Graham and Howard 2008, Storm 2008, Braaksma et al. 2016) and cultural heritage generally has a positive connotation. A question is what makes BCH recognised and thus valued in a society?

There is extensive literature concerned with people’s valuation of biological features and objects in landscapes. To cover this vast literature would be far beyond the scope of this paper, but it is nevertheless possible to identify some generalities. There are two main approaches to understand people’s valuation and appreciation of biological features of landscapes: that preferences are culturally derived and biased or that they have an evolutionary basis (Fry et al. 2009). An example of the latter is the so called “savanna hypothesis”, suggesting that humans have an innate preference for resource-rich, semi-open landscapes, with access to water bodies (Orians and Heerwagen 1992). For the purpose of this paper however, I leave this latter possibility out and henceforth focus on preferences reflecting culturally derived values.

Generally, it is acknowledged that aspects such as landscape beauty, knowledge and memory of landscape history are important factors in valuation of landscapes (e.g. Schama 1995, Olick and Robbins 1998, Fairclough and Herring 2016). Herrington (2016) remarked that there has been a renewed interest in the concept of beauty during the last decades, in discourses on art, philosophy and landscape research. For landscapes, Herrington (2016, page 447) proposed that the most important aspects of beauty are “…contextual beauty and (…) functional beauty (which) both ask us to include the landscape’s functional role in deeming a landscape beautiful.” There is empirical support for this proposition when applied to landscapes (e.g. Vallejo et al. 2015, Dalglish and Leslie 2016). A possibility (so far very little studied) is that aesthetic preferences develop as a reciprocal interaction between humans and the physical, biological and cultural environments, an aesthetic niche construction process (Portera 2016). Furthermore, as remarked by Antrop (2005, page 21): “…the ability to tell a history of a place strongly enhances the identity and the overall value”. This assumes that knowledge of landscape history and a “cultural memory” still exists. Potentially, landscapes may harbour biological (or other material) cultural traces that are not regarded as heritage, simply because of a loss of cultural memory (e.g. Rotherham 2007) or “cultural severance” (Rotherham 2013). An active and living knowledge and cultural memory relates to the current use of landscapes. This reflects the fact that the meaning and value people assign to material manifestations of culture relate to the extent people actually live on and work with the landscape (Buijs et al. 2006, Lindborg et al. 2009, Braaksma et al. 2016). This in turn reflects the importance of involvement of people when assessing values of landscapes and landscape features (e.g. Stenseke 2009, Svensson 2009, Dalglish and Leslie 2016).

These aspects of heritage may relate to both intangible and tangible values, in various ways linked to perceptions of continuity, private and public memories, identity and a sense of place (Taylor and Lennon 2011). The possibly strongest perception of heritage is when natural sites are regarded as sacred (e.g. Dudley et al. 2009, Allendorf et al. 2014, Jackson and Ormsby 2017).

Thus, in order to be recognised as biological cultural heritage (Figure 1), the following criteria should be fulfilled: (1) The biological cultural trace reflects either a previous (historical) human impact or a current impact which is rooted in what is currently considered as a tradition (whether “invented”, sensuHobsbawn (1983) or not). A time-depth, a history, is essential. (2) If the biological cultural trace no longer has a function or role, knowledge of its previous function or role is essential. (3) It is essential that the biological cultural trace evokes feelings, either due to its role for people’s identity and sense of place or for its sanctity or sheer beauty.

The growing interest in conservation of cultural landscapes reflects the fact that many old cultural landscapes are threatened, but also an awareness that cultural landscapes may be biologically rich. In a world of ever increasing human dominance, it is important to gain knowledge of how this biological richness has developed and could be maintained. Along with this interest, there is also an ambition to promote integration between research and programmes for cultural and natural heritage (Gillson and Willis 2004, Swedish National Heritage Board 2014, Anonymous 2017a, Crumley et al. 2018). For too long, these two fields have been separated in both academia and institutions, such a governmental authorities responsible for organising and managing heritage (including biological diversity). An important step to achieve such integration is to agree on concepts used in communication and research (e.g. Eriksson et al. 2018). I suggest that the proposed definition of biological cultural heritage (biological manifestations of culture, reflecting indirect or intentional effects or domesticated landscapes, resulting from historical human niche construction) will be helpful to promote such integration and a research agenda for studies of biological cultural heritage in general and thus to guide management programmes in cultural landscapes. This definition identifies different forms of relationship between biological features and culture, arranged in a gradient of increasing intensity of interactions between the focal biological features and culture. The concept of domesticated landscapes formed by niche construction provides a theoretical framework for identifying mechanisms behind interactions between culture and biological features (e.g. Laland and O’Brien 2012, Eriksson et al. 2018), interactions that are embedded in complex networks, entanglements (Hodder 2012, Eriksson and Arnell 2017) or “biodiversification” (Cevasco et al. 2015).

The second objective of this paper was to try to identify factors influencing when and why biological cultural heritage is recognised. The method was to compare two components of rural landscapes in Sweden, open and semi-open landscapes and forested landscapes, which differ in the way they are perceived as cultural landscapes.

The starting-point was that biological cultural heritage is generally over-looked in forests. I suggest that there are two main factors responsible for this. Firstly, recognition and valuation as heritage depends on social context, specifically relating to current activities by people, people’s perceptions of identity and sense of place, knowledge of history and a cultural memory both amongst people in general and amongst authorities. Concerning forests, there has been a loss of cultural memory (both locally and amongst authorities). This illustrates that recognising biological cultural heritage does not rely only on the biological features per se or on scientific knowledge of their historical background. Despite a solid scientific knowledge of the history of forest landscapes, biological cultural heritage is nevertheless over-looked. Secondly, basic assumptions and perceptions of a culture vs. nature divide, that emanated during the 19^th century as a part of Romanticism have had and still have, a pervasive influence on perceptions and valuation of forests. Together, these two factors contribute to create a blind spot for cultural heritage in forests.

What are the implications of this conclusion? Why should we care about biological cultural heritage in forests? After all, if, as several authors claim, the meaning and value people assign to material manifestations of culture are constantly changing and renegotiated in the current society (e.g. Hobsbawn 1983, Smith 2006, Graham and Howard 2008), i.e. heritage is a social construction, is not the loss of cultural memory regarding forests just a reflection of such a renegotiation? In the current society, forests are either managed for industrial production or, as a recent addition to management objectives, climate change mitigation (e.g. EASAC 2017) or for conservation of biodiversity. With the latter aim in mind, the perception of forests as wilderness may perhaps work perfectly well.

I think there is a two-part answer to the question why we ought to care about biological cultural heritage in forests. The first part of the answer is “philosophical” and the second is pragmatic.

The discourse on how to value heritage revolves around the question of value relativism, i.e. whether there is or is not, an absolute point of reference or frame, for assessing value to tangible and intangible manifestations of culture. In the context of biological conservation, such a reference point is usually termed a baseline. Some argue that there are such baselines and one obvious choice would be untouched nature. For example, according to EASAC (2017), the pre-degradation state (note the negative connotation in the choice of term) of forests is such a baseline, suggested to be independent of societal values. This idea is also underlying arguments that conservation biology should prioritise preserving wilderness over conservation of cultural landscapes (e.g. Wuerthner et al. 2014). Others argue that baselines are always socially constructed (e.g. Hilding-Rydevik et al. 2018). The latter argument seemingly fits, on scientific grounds, into the reasonable conclusion that the forests we discuss here are indeed historical cultural landscapes and that the untouched state does not exist anymore. The view that baselines are social constructs may seem to imply that what we chose as a baseline would be principally arbitrary. Some conservationists have expressed worries for using this way of handling baselines, the “shifting baseline syndrome”, i.e. when human perceptions of change guide conservation management (Pauly 1995, Papworth et al. 2009).

However, as remarked above, by referring to papers by Cronon (1996) and Proctor (1998), I would argue that the discussion on social construction in relation to biological features is somewhat confused. While the understanding and meaning we project on biological objects and features (such as a forest, a wooded meadow or a species) may well be socially constructed, these objects and features as such are, of course, objectively real. A reflection is that a focus on species instead of whole communities and ecosystems would alleviate the problems associated with whether nature as a whole is untouched or not. Most species are untouched in the sense of not being domesticated. Then it becomes an empirical question whether a focal species (or a group of species) has been favoured by or even dependent on historical cultural impacts. If this is the case, elements of cultural landscapes, for example a wood pasture or a wooded meadow, also represent a baseline that is not arbitrary.

This leads over to the second, pragmatic, part of the answer to the question why we ought to care about biological cultural heritage, namely that a multitude of biological features and objects in forests, including many species, actually were favoured by and even dependent on the historical cultural landscape (e.g. Björsne and Bradshaw 1998, Josefsson et al. 2009, Rotherham 2015, Agnoletti and Santoro 2015, Whitlock et al. 2017, references above in the Section “Biological cultural traces in forests”). In other words, these features and objects reflect the processes included in the definition of biological cultural heritage, indirect and intentional effects and historic landscape domestication, driven by human niche construction. Thus, conservation management of forests needs to incorporate knowledge of cultural history and this necessitates that biological cultural heritage in forests is recognised. As remarked earlier in this paper, research on species as historical cultural legacies in forests is a particularly neglected research field.

A recognition of biological cultural heritage is thus important irrespective of whether the conservation goal is to focus on culturally impacted forests or to try identifying what is considered as (or close to) a pristine state of forests (e.g. Samojlik et al. 2016). There is no inherent conflict between preserving relatively untouched forests and those with remaining traces of pre-industrial forest management. Consequently, even if it is true that biological cultural heritage is over-looked in forests, this does not imply that it is “wrong” to protect forests that have not yet been exploited by modern forestry. Given the current state for many threatened species, this may be highly motivated (e.g. Nilsson et al. 2001, Johansson et al. 2013).

In conclusion, it is argued that removing the blind spot for cultural history is essential for guiding development of both cultural and biological conservation programmes in forests. The notion of a blind spot for cultural history of forests should not be understood as criticism of the ambition to increase the forest area protected from modern forestry. However, it implies that features of previously culturally impacted forests should be recognised, for example, in restoration programmes. Furthermore, recognising and appreciating biological cultural heritage in forests will promote interest and learning of the history of forests and their values and will be informative for developing sustainable conservation programmes for all biota in forests, not only those that historically were favoured by culture. Finally, recognition of biological cultural heritage in forests will inspire and promote further integration of cultural and natural heritage research.

I am grateful to the organisers of the conference ‘Forests: Diversity of Natural and Cultural Heritage’ (SKÅNK) in Uppsala, October 3-5, 2017, where this paper was presented and to J. Ehrlén, K. Hylander, K.-J. Lindholm, I. Rotherham, J. Tzanopoulos and M. Santaoja for comments on the manuscript. This paper is a contribution from the project “Contesting marginality: The boreal forest of inland Scandinavia and the worlds outside, AD-1500 AD”, supported by the Swedish Research Council.