With the bird nesting season beginning, AS “Latvijas valsts meži” (LVM) is concluding the first stage of the bog restoration works being carried out under the project “Restoration of bog ecosystems in ĪADT”.
The first preparatory and bog restoration works began in the autumn of 2025. The largest volume of work has already been completed in Dūmiņu bog and Palšu bog.
LVM environmental project manager Helmuts Hofmanis explains:
“In habitat restoration work, weather conditions are of decisive importance. This year’s winter, with its long period of frost and snow, allowed the work to be carried out at the intended scale in many places, because forest machinery was able to move and operate without unnecessary downtime. As the frost held, the burning work also went well; it is usually hampered by rain and wet snow, which passed us by this winter.”
In Dūmiņu bog, which lies in the LVM Ziemeļkurzeme region within the “Raķupes ieleja” nature reserve, vegetation untypical of a bog has been cleared across an area of just under 60 hectares.
In Palšu bog, the work to be done with machinery has been fully completed – trees not characteristic of a natural bog have been cut across 20 ha. In Palšu bog the trees were thinned by an excavator fitted with a tree shear head, which used 140 cm wide tracks instead of the usual 70 cm in order to provide bearing capacity. This equipment allows the work to be done not only physically safely, since it reduces the risk of the machine sinking, but also in an environmentally gentle way, because the wide tracks do not create ruts. In addition, the shear head made it possible to meet an important condition set by environmental experts – to cut the trees as low as possible, so that the above-ground part of the stump does not exceed 15 cm in height. Such a condition ensures a considerably lower ability of the trees to produce coppice shoots.
In Palšu bog, unwanted vegetation still has to be cleared across a further 10 ha, but this will be done by hand in the autumn of this year.
In order to carry out the planned work later in Lunkiču bog, which lies in the “Paņemūnes meži” nature reserve, a masonry building that was degrading the environment was demolished last year right at the edge of the bog. It had survived in the bog environment from Soviet times, when peat was extracted here, and it was most likely a watchman’s house. So that machinery could reach the structure, obstructing trees were cut along the sides of the access road. The same access road will be used by forest machinery when bog restoration work begins in the second half of this year with the clearing of unwanted vegetation.
Technical work in the project areas will resume in September, once the restriction covering the bird nesting season has ended. Until then, environmental and forestry experts will survey all the project areas in order to plan and refine the work to be done.
All the biotechnical measures have been carried out under the project “Restoration of bog ecosystems in ĪADT”, during which, by the end of 2029, LVM will restore bog ecosystems in five specially protected nature areas. Project No. 6.1.1.7/1/24/I/001 “Restoration of bog ecosystems in ĪADT” is being implemented under the EU cohesion policy programme for 2021–2027, specific support objective 6.1.1. “Mitigating the economic, social and environmental consequences of the transition to climate neutrality in the most affected regions”. The lead partner of the project is LVM, and the cooperation partner is Dabas aizsardzības pārvalde.
The total funding for the project is 7,058,824 euros, including 6,000,000 euros of Just Transition Fund funding and 1,058,824 euros of state budget co-financing.