Forest Landscape Restoration and Its Role in Enhancing Biodiversity Conservation

Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR) has gained global recognition as an integrated approach to addressing forest degradation, biodiversity loss, and declining ecosystem services while supporting sustainable livelihoods. Unlike conventional reforestation efforts that prioritize tree cover alone, FLR adopts a holistic, landscape-scale framework that emphasizes ecological integrity, biodiversity recovery, and social well-being. This review examines the role of FLR in enhancing biodiversity conservation by restoring habitats, improving landscape connectivity, and strengthening ecosystem resilience. It synthesizes current scientific evidence on restoration principles, ecological outcomes, and implementation strategies, including natural regeneration, assisted restoration, and multifunctional land-use systems. The review also discusses socioeconomic dimensions, policy and governance frameworks, and the challenges associated with scaling up FLR initiatives under changing climatic and land-use pressures. Overall, the findings highlight that well-designed and context-specific FLR initiatives can significantly contribute to biodiversity conservation while simultaneously delivering climate mitigation, ecosystem services, and sustainable development benefits.