Photo: LFZ / Buchgraber
Forests for generations
Sustainable forest management ensures a healthy heritage for succeeding generations. Forest management as it is practised today in Austria can be called sustainable as defined by the Austrian Forest Act.
Austria’s forest legislation is among the most stringent ones world-wide. It aims at the ecological, economic and social sustainability in forest management.Since the Amendment 2002 its definition can be found in the introduction of the Forest Act, putting an even greater emphasis on the ensuring of the sustainable multi-functionality of forests. Forestry is setting itself much more stringent and, above all, much more long-term, standards than all other forms of management. One must not forget that we plant the forest now which future generations will harvest.
But not only the economic function of forests, the production of the sustainable raw material of timber is of importance. According to the Austrian Forest Act other forest functions include the protective, the recreational and the beneficial functions.
Forest management satisfies tasks for the public, such as the tending and maintenance of protective and protection forests. They offer protection against slope movements and erosion which would massively threaten our living and transport areas.
Forestry makes a great contribution to ensuring people’s bases of life, water and clean air. Forests and the green forest plants produce oxygen in the course of the photosynthesis.
Forests offer space for leisure and recreational opportunities. Whether it’s hiking, walking or any other sportive activity: The forest is a natural sports arena.
To be able to provide these services, which are important to the entire population, forest areas at extreme locations often have to be managed even though this requires high expenditure. Therefore it is necessary to create not only legal rules and regulations, but also financial incentives in order to offer a fair compensation for the required forest tending and conservation measures.
The Austrian forest sector is subsidised both by a national programme and by an EU co-financed programme. Under the Rural Development Programme protection forest projects, afforestations, the conversion of forests not adapted to the site and of low-yield forests, forest tending, information and consulting, moreover investment measures, but also the construction of forest roads are subsidised.
Without forest roads the forest tending measures required according to the state of the art or the implementation of phytosanitary measures, and economical harvesting, are hardly feasible.
15.02.2008,