To ensure sustainable forest management and reduce risks both to the working environment and to natural values, AS “Latvijas valsts meži” (LVM) urges all lessees of hunting rights to pay attention to the upkeep of the hunting infrastructure they have built, and to the dismantling and disposal of structures that have reached the end of their service life.

Hunting infrastructure includes hunting towers, animal feeders, small bridges, footbridges, shooting lanes and supplementary feeding areas – features that improve the safety and effectiveness of hunting, but which require responsible management. When installing or maintaining such infrastructure, occupational safety requirements and the rules on preventing environmental pollution must be observed. It is particularly important to comply with the conditions governing the siting of towers.

Edijs Leišavnieks, head of the LVM forest protection division, explains:

“An orderly and safe environment in Latvia's state forests matters to hunters and to those who come to relax there alike, so we are reminding people of the need not only to build good-quality hunting infrastructure, but also to look after it and to dismantle it responsibly once it has served its purpose”.

LVM staff have carried out a technical assessment of previously installed hunting infrastructure, inspecting more than 3000 hunting towers on the ground in areas where the hunting rights belong to LVM.

Requirements for maintaining hunting infrastructure

It is prohibited to drive nails into living trees, to damage their trunks or to strip large numbers of branches from their crowns. Living trees may serve only as a support, providing stability for the structure.

Once hunting towers are no longer in use, they must be dismantled: the metal parts are to be removed and the structure sawn into pieces that are either scattered through the surrounding stand or taken out of the forest, rather than simply being pushed over and left where they stood.

Feeders may not be sited closer than 100 metres to young stands, nor on roads, in ditches or on forest compartment lines. Likewise, the use of compartment lines for siting towers is subject to strict seasonal and technical restrictions.

Information on the conditions drawn up by LVM for installing hunting infrastructure is available on the LVM website. LVM invites lessees of hunting rights to review their existing structures and ensure that they meet the requirements.

Although 30,384 red deer were culled in the 2025/2026 hunting season – the highest number of animals taken in a single season to date – the permitted cull has for several years running been met at below the 90 % level, which has an impact on the young stands under management. LVM's provisional data likewise indicate that in the first four months of 2026 damage caused by deer-family animals was recorded across considerably larger areas than in the corresponding period of 2025.

With a view to the longer term, a memorandum of cooperation was concluded in June 2025 to foster effective cooperation between hunters and holders of hunting rights and to jointly reduce the damage caused by wild animals to agriculture, forestry and fisheries. It was signed by the Ministry of Agriculture, AS “Latvijas valsts meži” , and the associations “Latvijas Mednieku asociācija”, “Latvijas Mednieku savienība”, “Latgales mednieku un makšķernieku biedrība”, “Latvijas Meža īpašnieku biedrība”, “Zemnieku saeima”, “Lauksaimniecības organizāciju sadarbības padome” and “Mazjūras zvejnieki”.