Forest predominantly composed of trees established through natural regeneration, including mixed or uncertain cases where natural regeneration is expected to dominate.
The term helps distinguish naturally established forest from planted forest and plantation forest. That distinction affects how land-cover evidence is interpreted in deforestation and forest-degradation assessments.
EUDR Article 2 includes forests where planted versus natural origin cannot be distinguished, mixed forests where naturally regenerated trees are expected to dominate at maturity, coppice from naturally regenerated trees, and naturally regenerated trees introduced through assisted measures.
Regulation (EU) 2023/1115 on deforestation-free products
forest predominantly composed of trees established through natural regeneration; it includes any of the following: (a) forests for which it is not possible to distinguish whether planted or naturally regenerated; (b) forests with a mix of naturally regenerated native tree species and planted or seeded trees, and where the naturally regenerated trees are expected to constitute the major part of the growing stock at stand maturity; (c) coppice from trees originally established through natural regeneration; (d) naturally regenerated trees of introduced species;
Reference: Article 2, point 9
Public draft page. Preserve EUDR land-use, forest-type, actor-location, and market-trigger boundaries.
Implementation records should capture forest classification evidence, tree-origin assessment, maturity expectations, stand history, remote-sensing or field evidence, and uncertainty where planted and natural regeneration cannot be cleanly separated.
Naturally regenerating forest is a classification evidence term. It helps keep forest-origin assumptions auditable instead of collapsing all tree cover into a single forest label.