Photo: Leopold Ziehaus
To whom do Austria’s forests belong?
Forests in Austria - this means over 170,000 forest owners and another 9,000 persons, most of them working as foresters, district forest officers, forest wardens, or professionally trained forest workers, who are active in the forestry sector either for private forest enterprises or for the Austrian Federal Forests.
Most of Austria’s forests are privately owned (80.5 %) and are managed by forest farmers on a very small-scale basis. Almost 170,000 forest farmers manage holdings of less than 200 ha of forested land – this accounts for almost half of the total Austrian forest land. About one third of the total forest area is managed by large forest enterprises. Only about 15% are state-owned and belong to the Austrian Federal Forests. Being a forest farmer means to accept closeness to nature as an economic principle, to think in terms of generations, and to take all possible efforts to ensure the life of forests. This includes regeneration and tending just as much as timber harvest and the sustainable safeguarding of forest effects. However, to be able to do this, it must also be possible to earn profits from forest utilisation. The economic utilisation of the raw material wood secures an income for forest farmers and constitutes their basis of life; it is in no way detrimental to forests since it is carried out in a sustainable way, which means that the quantity of wood felled is not higher than the increment.26.06.2008, Lebensministerium IV/3