Photo: BMLFUW-WLV V...
Protection forest – What is that?
Austria’s protection forests (19.3 % of Austria’s forests) play an important role and thus require special attention.
Forests are indispensable for the protection of living areas in Austria. Their protective function is of enormous, ever increasing economic significance. Protection forests concern us all! The term “protection forest” is defined in the Austrian Forest Act. The Forest Act 1975 as amended in 2002 distinguishes between site-protecting forests and object-protecting forests.Site-protecting forests (forests located on specific sites, referred to as “Standortschutzwälder”), within the meaning of this Federal Act are forests on sites that are endangered by the eroding forces of wind, water and gravity, and which require special treatment to protect the soil and the plant cover and to ensure reforestation. They include
1. forests on wind-blown drifting sand or drifting soil;
2. forests tending to the development of karst or on sites that are particularly prone to erosion;
3. forests on steep, rocky ground, low-soil depth locations if their reforestation is possible only under difficult conditions;
4. forests on slopes where dangerous slope slides might occur;
5. the plant cover in the upper timber line;
6. the forest belt immediately bordering the upper timberline.
Object-protecting forests (“Objektschutzwälder”) within the meaning of the Forest Act are forests which protect humans, human settlements or facilities, or cultivated soil in particular against natural hazards or injuring environmental impacts and which require special treatment to gain and ensure their protective or beneficial effect.
If further stress occurs (e.g. air pollution, damage due to game) in addition to these erosive forces, the system can easily lose its stability.
However, the Austrian Forest Inventory shows that especially the status of protection forests is extremely unsatisfactory. About one fifth of the Austrian protection forests are in a stage of disintegration after their stage of development, more than one third show only low crown density or are defoliated, the share of temporarily unstocked forest areas and gaps in the forest cover is unproportionately high, a big part of them is over-mature.
In order to ensure the protective function of forests the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, Environment and Water Management together with all stakeholders launched a package of measures which are combined in the Austrian Protection Forest Strategy and implemented via the protection forest forums.
According to the provisions of section 22 of the Forest Act 1975 as amended, owners of protection forests depending on the local status of the forest have to treat protection forests in such a way that, provided these forests are regenerated in time, their maintenance as the best possible, site-appropriate forest cover with a solid internal structure is guaranteed.
The efforts to preserve and ensure these forest areas, which are of such big importance to humans, began already in the 19th century.
Working towards this goal requires the co-operation of all whose activities have an influence on protection forests. In protection forest forums of the Federal Provinces the necessary measures for protection forests are co-ordinated and the required balance of interest is achieved. Special importance has been attached to the appropriate order of forests and pasture as well as to a type of game management which suits protection forests and the respective situation.
The improvement of protection forests is a matter that is taken very serious in Austria!
07.01.2010,