High Conservation Value Forest

High conservation value forest (HCVF) is a Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) forest management designation used to describe those forests who meet criteria defined by the FSC Principles and Criteria of Forest Stewardship.

Specifically, high conservation value forests are those that possess one or more of the following attributes:

1. forest areas containing globally, regionally or nationally significant: concentrations of biodiversity values (e.g. endemism, endangered species, refugia); and/or large landscape-level forests, contained within, or containing the management unit, where viable populations of most if not all naturally occurring species exist in natural patterns of distribution and abundance
2. forest areas that are in or contain rare, threatened or endangered ecosystems
3. forest areas that provide basic services of nature in critical situations (e.g. watershed protection, erosion control)
4. forest areas fundamental to meeting basic needs of local communities (e.g. subsistence, health) and/or critical to local communities' traditional cultural identity (areas of cultural, ecological, economic or religious significance identified in cooperation with such local communities).