This bibliographic review aims at answering a question often asked by forest managers : Is biodiversity useful ? Facing economical and societal constraints, the foresters currently have to preserve biodiversity without compromising wood production. This paper is focused on European temperate forests and deals with the benefits of two biodiversity-friendly forest practices on forest functions (production, resistance and resilience) : (i) maintaining mixed-species stands (ii) maintaining deadwood. Although theoretical and empirical bases on the link between biodiversity and forest function are well documented, the references on forest ecosystem are still scarce. This is mainly due to the difficulty to work on such perennial and slow-developing ecosystems. However, favouring mixed species stands and preserving deadwood benefit some forest ecosystem functions. These benefits, difficult to quantify in economic terms, could be integrated in cost-benefit assessments in order to quantify the impact of such measures. From now on, gaps in scientific knowledge prevent such assessments.