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Forest landscape fragmentation poses a significant challenge to the conservation of species diversity. Evaluating the suitability of forest landscape restoration (FLR) becomes essential as it promotes effective management of forest resources and protects species diversity. This study focused on deploying and testing a suitability evaluation framework system for FLR in the Saihanba area of Hebei, China. The framework system incorporated factors such as land cover type, landscape structure, soil quality, and topography. Using the matter-element model, the study evaluated the restoration suitability and identified priority restoration areas. The results revealed that land cover type and landscape structure were the primary factors influencing FLR in the study area. The suitable area for FLR in the study area was about 519.20 km2, accounting for 55.55% of the total area. The area of moderate, marginal, and unsuitable restoration accounted for 17.30%, 23.96%, and 3.18% of the study area, respectively. The suitable restoration areas predominantly consisted of natural secondary forest characterized by large patch areas, short distances between patches, and complex patch shapes. In the study area, the objective of FLR should be protect large and complex shaped patches of natural secondary forests for better conservation of species diversity. The FLR suitability evaluation conducted in this study provide a valuable guidance for promoting species-diversity conservation and restoration of forest ecosystems at the landscape scale in the study area and other similar regions.

Since its establishment, the ecosystem of the Saihanba Mechanical Forest Farm has begun to be restored. The extraction of ecological corridors and identification of ecological nodes based on the minimum cumulative resistance model and the gravity model are important for improving regional ecological connectivity and maintaining ecological service functions. This study took the Saihanba Mechanical Forest Farm as the study area. Based on the landscape pattern index analysis of Fragstats and the ecological sensitivity analysis of the minimum resistance surface, the ecological source area was selected according to the patch areas, and the ecological corridors and ecological nodes in the study area were extracted. We combined the road network and ecological nodes to build stepping stones for ecological node construction to promote biological migration, improved forest landscape patch structure through important ecological corridors, and finally built a woodland network structure. The results show that the areas with high ecological sensitivity were concentrated in the road network, water area, and construction land area. Additionally, we identified 20 ecological sources distributed in the central and north–south vertical areas of the Saihanba Forest Farm. We also extracted ninety-six key ecological corridors distributed in the central area, thirty-nine important ecological nodes, and thirteen stepping stones for construction. Through the adjustment of patches along the corridor, the overall connectivity significantly increased. This study can provide a reasonable reference for the optimization of forest landscape in the Saihanba Mechanical Forest Farm.