At its meeting on February 19, the working group for forestry act development discussed the principles for supporting private forestry activities, the options for improving forest survey activities, and defined the main terms. According to mr. Olav Etverk, Head of the Forestry Department of the Ministry of the Environment, the preference is to support activities which would enable the growth of the next valuable forest generation. "This area is currently the most problematic one in forestry. Different other forms of support are naturally not excluded, however, they depend on the possibilities of the state," said mr. Etverk. The other main subject discussed was improvement of the situation concerning the quality level of forest surveys. According to mr. Etverk, the inventory data are not always reliable to date since any company that has included forest survey as an activity in its statutes may operate in this area. "For planning forestry activities, forest specialists of the county environmental departments need to approve the forestry statements, those in their turn rely on the inventory data. Today, forest specialists often need to visit the sites to verify whether the actual situation is correctly represented in the inventory data. This implies additional costs," said mr. Etverk. Organisation of forest survey activities will be the task of the Forestry Centre (to be established), the Centre will also bear responsibility for securing the high quality of data. A company which intends to perform forest surveys will need to obtain a permit for this from the Forestry Centre. A company that does not have such permit may, for example, not submit bids in the cases of public procurement. The working group also defined a number of important terms - e.g. private forest owner, private forest owner subject to support, and forest owners’ association . Private forest owner - in the context of the act - is a physical person or legal person subject to private law who owns forest land. Private forest owner subject to support is either a forest owners’ association or a physical person owning forest land. The working group for forestry act development is expected to have its next meeting in mid-March. The above working group includes representatives of the Ministry of the Environment, the Centre of Forest Protection and Silviculture, the Environmental Inspectorate, the Forest Survey Centre, the Private Forestry Centre, the State Forest Management Centre, and the Estonian Agricultural University. For additional information please contact: |
