zemeunvalsts.lv introduction. The political activity of recent months, aimed at rooting out what is hopefully surplus and unnecessary spending from the state budget, has overshadowed two things that are, in our view, no less important – amid all the talk of how not to spend needlessly, one thing has been forgotten entirely: how to earn a good deal more. The forest sector, in calling for the resources at its disposal to be used, has come in for predictable attacks from the in-house opponents of the industries that earn and work (people ready to tell anyone anything, so long as they are given a chance to criticise forest owners or managers). When television carries a call not to use available resources and, given what we know about biological processes, effectively to squander them (if we do not harvest what we could harvest, what happens?), that is surprising. Why? An official of a municipally owned company points out to colleagues in the sector that we have a resource available, we are not taking anything surplus, we are using what we can – and that, apparently, is not right.

In this connection we recall an article written almost six years ago but still topical, about the age and diameter of trees, and about forests...

Video: 50-year-old spruces look like ninety-year-olds
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=X1sP8M6gBcg

In research forests, spruces with a diameter exceeding 50 centimetres have been grown in >50 years. For such a situation to turn from a forest owner's dream into reality, both high-quality planting stock and appropriate tending of the stand are needed, as well as changes to the legislation. These were the conclusions drawn after viewing a spruce stand at the Forest Research Station in Kalsnava. At present the research forests, just under 29,000 ha, are “scattered” across the whole of Latvia. Mārtiņš Līdums, director of the Forest Research Station, explained that in research forests it is permitted to do what is forbidden in other forests – essentially, to disregard the requirements of all manner of regulations. It should be stressed that it is precisely by ignoring forestry regulations and doing nothing more that spruces of 50-56 centimetres in diameter have grown in 54 years. In effect, a half-century-old spruce forest looks as though it were 80-90 years old. At the same time it should be remembered that only a very small proportion of the timber processors operating in Latvia would be technologically capable of sawing logs of 50-56 cm in diameter into boards.

A combination of factors

Āris Jansons, a researcher at the Latvian State Forest Research Institute “Silava”, explains that forestry has several important components which, without one another and without their mutual interaction, will not deliver a good result. The first is breeding, where seed material is collected not from just any cone, but from the best and most productive trees. In Latvia we can speak of forest tree breeding as far back as 1957, when the proposition was formulated: in the forest we want trees that give the best yield. As a result, the collection of seed from the best specimens of the relevant tree species was begun.

“When planting an apple orchard, too, the grower chooses to plant not the apple trees “that happen to come to hand”, but those that will give the tastiest apples, the ones buyers ask for,” explains Ā. Jansons, recalling that trees are grown in the forest not only for their beauty but also for commercial use – for processing. Processors, in turn, most need tree trunks with fewer branches, so it is logical that forest owners will have an interest in planting precisely that kind of tree seedling.

“Today in Latvia tree breeding and the growing of tree seedlings are at the top level in Europe, if I may put it that way,” A. Jansons says proudly. The second important factor is the trees' growing conditions: if trees are planted in a very wet place (a bog) or, on the contrary, the soil suffers a regular and prolonged moisture deficit, the planted stand will languish rather than grow, which is in no way advantageous to the forest owner. Undeniably, owners of forests (as well as of fields and arable land) have an interest in growing the largest possible yield on a hectare and harvesting it sooner. The third component – the destroyers – forest animals, which enjoy the growing greenery (especially in young stands), various pests (insects), and also wind and fire. Observations over the past ten years point to increasing cyclone activity, particularly when it occurs at a time when the ground is not frozen, and not only individual trees but even whole stands are snapped off or uprooted.

“Resistance to wind is linked to the thinning of the stand and to the number of trees – the less a stand is thinned, the greater its resistance to wind. Studies show that after each thinning, for the next 3-5 years the trees in that stand are not wind-resistant,” explains Ā. Jansons. In his view, less thinning can be achieved by planting fewer trees per hectare. In the 50-year-old research forest, a spruce diameter of 54-56 cm has been achieved by planting only 1200 seedlings per hectare. At present Latvian regulations require 2000-2200 spruce seedlings to be planted per hectare.

“To grow a forest faster, you have to plant less. That would allow savings on buying and planting seedlings, or else more could be planted,” concludes Arnis Muižnieks, chairman of the board of the Latvian Forest Owners Association. He does consider, though, that the first task would be to change the requirements laid down in the current legislation on the minimum number of seedlings per hectare, reducing it to at least 1500 seedlings.

A chance to improve efficiency

Ā. Jansons acknowledges that the rise in costs of every kind (including immovable property tax) is increasingly forcing landowners, quite literally, to make land use more efficient – to grow the crop faster and with fewer losses, which in forestry are unavoidable for the reasons mentioned above.

“If we manage the forest the way we have done so far (a spruce stand would grow for 80 years), then, counting up what we lose to thinning, possible wind damage, forest animals and pests, for example, we can estimate that instead of a 100 ha stand only 67 ha will be left,” says Ā. Jansons, showing the calculation. The scale of these losses can be reduced.

“A mathematical paradox – “less” at the start means “more” at the end, and with lower costs into the bargain,” Ā. Jansons observes. Several forest owners greet the scientists' conclusions with enthusiasm and hope that the decision-makers – the politicians – will see them too. There is no denying that forestry in Latvia has so far been regulated far more strictly than in the Scandinavian countries or Estonia. Although, compared with the last decade of the previous century, forest owners now have considerably greater freedom of action, it is still relatively more restricted (narrower) than that of their closest competitors in Scandinavia.

The goals are clear

Arnis Mužnieks recalls that, through cooperation between forest sector organisations, proposals have been drawn up for a Forest Sector Strategy for the period after 2020. It sets out a shorter-term (to 2030) and a medium-term (to 2050) vision for the development of the forest sector, which provides for increasing the productivity of Latvia's forests by 25% by 2050.

“We can grow forest much better and more productively. Scientists' estimates show that by 2050 we can increase forest productivity not merely by 25% but by even more, provided both that the genetic quality of the seedlings is outstanding and that the forest is well tended, and so on,” explained A. Muižnieks. “It is a package solution – reduce the number of trees that must be planted per hectare, allow a stand to be felled sooner on the basis of diameter, as is the case for example in neighbouring Estonia, where the average climatic temperature is lower than in Latvia, while at the same time imposing a requirement that the felled area be regenerated solely and exclusively with high-quality planting material,” A. Muižnieks suggests, reckoning that such a solution would kill two birds with one stone – reducing forest owners' costs (less planting, less need for thinning, stands more resistant to windthrow) while allowing trees to be grown faster and, with that, payment for what is grown to be received sooner.

“There is no need to process trees that thick (over 50 cm),” stressed Kristaps Klauss, executive director of the Latvian Forest Industry Federation. Ā. Jansons, for his part, pointed to another important fact: many people dislike clear-felled areas, yet these are usually visible for only two to five years, because after that, even with nothing done to them, they simply grow over. If we look at the places hit by the windthrows of autumn 1967, today they are in no way different from stands that were harvested and replanted with a new forest – there is biological diversity, and birds, insects and animals. The stories that a clear-felled area = a desert do not correspond to the truth.

“There is no information about any significant negative long-term impact on biological diversity, although of course there is one in the short term, but what people dislike most is the look of the landscape,” explains Āris Jansons.

The article was first published in the magazine “Dienas Bizness” on 19 August 2019. Video by Monta Glumane