You are the Director of the Forest Advisory Service Centre (MKPC). I suspect not everyone in Latvia and in the forest sector has heard of this centre: what does it do, what are its tasks?

The Forest Advisory Service Centre is a branch of the Latvian Rural Advisory and Training Centre (LLKC); we do the things a forest owner needs done up until the moment the timber is sold.

The beginnings of the Forest Advisory Service Centre go back to 2006. Latvia had already joined the European Union, the first area payments and subsidies had appeared, and these could also be used in forestry. Some such opportunities, for example in connection with afforestation, had already been available in the pre-accession period; it was to be expected that support for forestry would from then on be available on a regular basis, for a wide range of activities, and not only for the duration of individual projects.

Forest owners therefore needed a consultant, an adviser or informational support that could tell them about these opportunities and explain how to use them – what they are, who can apply, what documents are needed, what conditions must be met, and so on. At the time we organised ourselves within the State Forest Service (VMD) as a separate unit; later, in 2010, we moved with the whole team to the LLKC in Ozolnieki to carry on what we had started. With that came a splendid opportunity for us as an organisation to apply for support measures from the European Union's Rural Development Programme as well, so as to provide forest owners with training opportunities, study trips to exchange experience, and advice – something that had not been possible with the status of a state institution.

If I am counting correctly, the MKPC turns 20 this year.

If we count from the moment when the decision was taken to set up an advisory centre within the VMD, that is correct.

Setting aside for a moment the daily news agenda and geopolitics, what is currently occupying the mind of the head of the MKPC?

In order to work more effectively and to offer forest owners the things they need, as well as to inform them about areas where knowledge is scarce or lacking, we have joined the European Forest Advisers Association, which brings together organisations that provide advice to forest owners. The Nordic countries are more widely represented in the association, but overall there are organisations from all over Europe involved, including from the United Kingdom. If a country has private forests, consultancy firms and organisations "appear". By way of contrast, for example – in Poland there are very few private forests and the advisory system is undeveloped, whereas if we look at Finland, there are several organisations there offering forest owners training and advisory services.

The association does not have formal organisational status; it is more of an informal information or communication channel, coordinated by the European Forest Institute. Last year we joined a shared EU-funded Horizon project whose aim is to strengthen the forest advisory system in EU member states. The project includes analysis – what advisory systems exist in Europe, what the good things are and what the bad things are, promoting mutual exchange of experience, what methods consultants use, what "tools" there are (not only digital ones, but also, for example, our information publication "Čiekurs") for informing forest owners, and so on.

As part of the project, national contact points for forestry consultants have been established in the participating countries, which is a new dimension for us too, since the MKPC serves as the contact point for forestry consultants in Latvia. Why? Our team of consultants is not the only one; there are other teams doing excellent work, for example forest owners' cooperatives, associations, and individual consultants as well. At the end of last year we brought Latvia's forest consultants together to talk about the advisory system, its problems and how the situation might be improved. Around 20 representatives came in all, and we involved the VMD too. Why? It is not the service's core activity, but to a certain extent they also provide advice on specific matters. The moment a forest owner turns to the VMD, they receive a certain amount of explanation.

During the meeting we assessed the strengths and weaknesses of Latvia's advisory system, and so on. An important fact that colleagues emphasise and that we agree with – Latvia has a considerable and widespread share of private forests and a great many forest owners, which means that consultants do not in practice compete with one another, because the scope for advising some 116,000 forest owners is a very broad field of work and there is enough work for everyone.

Forestry is a highly competitive sector, it is a very good business in Latvia, and the economic environment is very favourable. During the meeting we agreed on this fairly unanimously.

Another important matter, which I would call a problem – at present forest owners receive a fair number of offers from various individuals and company representatives who want to buy the trees growing on their property, saying: "I will do everything that needs doing for absolutely nothing, just sell me those trees..." Working in the sector, we understand perfectly well that nothing comes for free – the trip out to the property, the time spent, the fuel and so on all cost something, and if someone promises it for free, it will be priced into the deal being made or the next one.

You could say that the more offers a forest owner has, the greater the choice, which is by no means a bad thing, but receiving insistent telephone calls or even visits to your home... this is where a lot of questions arise for the forest owner – how do you know, where did you find out, how did you establish that I am the owner, and so on. Usually there are no clear answers here, only various philosophical evasions.

What am I trying to say with this? Latvia has no clear definition of what a forest consultant is. At present almost anyone can claim to be the best and the most knowledgeable on forest matters. We have no official certification or recognition, and a forest owner has no way of understanding clearly who the genuine forest consultants are, the ones they can turn to without worry. The market is in effect "full" of offers from all sorts of "very best" specialists – I look on social media and see 17 or more advertisements, and so on. Where is the problem? Fraudsters are still operating in this field; properties and felling sites are still being bought for considerably less than their true value. When we, at an owner's invitation, value a felling site, we tell them the optimal price. It happens that the owner describes their experience so far and the information they have obtained and... we hear, for example, "I sold the felling site for 35,000 euros, but the first offer was 12,000." I will repeat myself: such things still happen, and it is hard to say whether they have become less frequent over the years; this is not doing business, it is fraud. There can always be a higher or lower price, which is understandable, but if it differs by a factor of three... That simply cannot be!

People have been talking about this issue in various contexts for quite some time, yet the problem persists. One of zemeunvalsts.lv's early interviews was about a situation in which several buyers had spoken to a forest owner and, for reasons unknown, she sold to the cheapest one... If there is plenty of information, if it is repeated, emphasised, if people are urged not to rush, to think it over and so on, why does someone still fall into the hands of swindlers?

The warnings are repeated and they are heard regularly from our side too in "Čiekurs", but the number of owners, as I mentioned earlier, is still very large and, importantly, owners change, and people who until now have had no connection with forestry are also becoming forest owners. We have now reached the point where the properties recovered in the 1990s are being inherited by a new generation (more than 30 years have gone by). It is not easy for someone without knowledge to grasp what a property (a felling site) is worth, and 10,000 euros is still a lot of money (of course, 30,000 is incomparably better). You cannot walk into a forest and, without experience and knowledge, work out what that forest or felling site is worth. And if someone drives out to an owner like that, promises confidently and swears blind that they will do the most thorough and professional valuation, and finally says: "Your forest is worth 12,000 euros, but if you like I will give you another 3,000, so 15,000 and it's a done deal"... it happens that the owner is neatly "taken in". Let me put it this way – this "business" is so sweet and the potential profit so large that it is worth devoting time to looking for potential candidates. Unfortunately, we see that all too clearly.

A certain paradox: there is plenty of information, yet it is still possible to take dishonest advantage of a person's ignorance.

I have the feeling that the number of such cases is increasing. I suspect that in the past it was not publicly known or visible, or else the dishonest deals took place within the relatively narrow circle of a village, parish or small town. At present there are companies that go about this purposefully and publicly, using modern communication tools and artificial intelligence as well, and moreover promising to do everything free of charge, on top of offering the "best" price for the trees.

We feel it day to day, which is why it is sometimes not easy to tell a forest owner: "We will value everything, sort it out and get it done, but... it will not be free."

Listening to you, I see a big, handsome sign before my eyes – "the only free cheese is in the mousetrap" (and even that has to be bought by someone!)...

Most likely...

From what you say it is clear that consultants want to put the situation in order, so that an uninformed forest owner would at least know where to look and check whether the eager buyer and promiser who has found them is a trustworthy and competent person...

That is accurate enough and close to our thinking. A consultant must have professional knowledge about forests, basic knowledge of communication – how to talk to a client – be independent in their decisions, and be genuinely able to stand on the side of defending the forest owner's interests. On that last point, if a consultant has a personal interest in acquiring a felling site or a forest property, then you are not a consultant in the true sense of the word; you are advising in order to strengthen your own commercial interests.

Independence as the cornerstone of advisory work is established in many European countries. As a consultant, I must be able to answer for every figure I have included in the document, calculation and so on.

If we assess the situation in practical terms, a forest owner can invest a certain amount in good time by inviting in a professional consultant to come and value their property or stand, and this valuation will serve as a benchmark. When the moment comes to sell the property or the felling site, and nothing fundamental has changed in the world, the owner already knows a specific figure and can haggle if need be, and so on.

Forest properties are a different matter from felling sites; logging and wood-processing companies in Latvia are also quite active buyers of forest properties, but the price setters up to now have essentially been foreign investors. Of course, if your property has mature stands that can be harvested, the value of the property will also be affected by timber prices at the given moment. Valuing felling sites is more straightforward.

One positive thing can be concluded from this conversation – however much those who think otherwise may try to argue that forest management is nothing good, the sector is thriving, the market is active, and so on.

Forest management is a good business and forest owners are very active. A forest is not an asset you have to keep pouring money into; you can manage a forest so that it brings in additional income and profit while you get on with other things day to day. In Latvia that means more than 100,000 small businesses whose owners can work elsewhere day to day. The forest "works" by itself. The size of your business depends on the number of hectares; if you have a lot of them, it is conceivable that you can start considering that you no longer need another job and can become (work as) a forest owner full time.

So forest consultants are gradually moving towards founding their own organisation...

Not long ago I took part in an EU Common Agricultural Policy network seminar on innovative tools in consultants' work, with around 160 participants. There were not many representatives of the forest sector there, though the principles remain similar for everyone. I concluded that in many countries certification for consultants has been established (in Estonia, for example), that there are consultants' associations which people join if they meet the set criteria, and that the associations themselves consider how, where and in what form to organise training or other measures to raise consultants' qualifications.

To sum up, it is important that a farmer or a forest owner should be able to satisfy themselves and check whether a particular person – a consultant – has the appropriate knowledge and professional experience and whether what they say is worth trusting. This assessment of suitability must be external and independent. I think we need such a system in Latvia...

If we recall the not so distant past – the spruce bark beetle invasion came. What did certain businesspeople do? They went to forest owners and literally urged them on – cut it down, they will gnaw the lot. Without any assessment at all, so long as it was a spruce stand. Habitat mapping took place – we heard something similar there.

Let me move on to the next story and a bitter experience. The previous Rural Development Programme already included an EU support measure for forest owners – the provision of advisory services. These took the form of individual consultations for forest owners on specific topics, with full EU funding, i.e. free of charge for the recipient of the advice. MKPC consultants delivered this until September 2025, over time informing forest owners ever more widely about the availability of this option, while such advice was also provided by the forest owners' cooperative "Mežsaimnieks". One of the advisory topics – informing owners about the value of felling sites – was rated very highly by owners and was in wide demand. For the programming period up to 2027, the CAP Strategic Plan also includes advisory services for forest owners, and last year a procurement was organised for their provision, in which we took part, but... to our deep regret and bewilderment, the only criterion assessed in substance in that procurement was price. Nothing else. The conditions did include other requirements, but these were assessed in a purely formal manner. The bidder with the lowest price won; it was not us, and it was not the "Mežsaimnieks" cooperative either.

Until the last moment I did not believe that a company could win such a procurement with a bid featuring a single consultant with secondary vocational forestry education, … and not a single consultant with higher forestry education. This is one of those moments when I feel that the consultant certification I mentioned earlier is necessary, because even in a procurement like this almost anyone can say: "Hey! I'm a forestry consultant!" and be authorised to provide EU-funded forestry advice to Latvia's forest owners.

Still, still the lowest price is the big carrot that the hand of those organising procurements keeps reaching and reaching for...

Unfortunately so! Let me add one nuance – in the procurement we offered a price per hour of consultation. These consultations will no longer be free of charge for the forest owner in future; a co-payment will be required, and that must certainly be taken into account. If we set a high price, we have to be aware that the forest owner's co-payment will also be higher and that there will be fewer advisory hours available overall; in any case, once the consultation is over, we will have to tell the owner: "Look, we did this and that, but you have a co-payment! Pay up!"

To add a further remark on that procurement, in my view no other criteria were assessed at all – neither the availability of consultants across the whole country, nor consultants' capacity, nor existing conflicts of interest.

There is 1.4 million euros available for advice to forest owners aimed at strengthening Latvia's private forests up to autumn 2028. Will the goal – strengthening private forestry – be achieved?

Changing the subject, the wider public recently learned about the animals that died in Ķemeri National Park; there was no specific explanation... and there still is not.

As far as one can tell, everything that happened was connected with the management of that particular habitat. The winter was harsh enough, and if the density and behaviour of the animals depend on the available (supplied) food base, and they have not adapted to a different way of life, then food certainly had to be provided. Otherwise we see the result. One thing has to be said, though: in nature there have been, are and will be situations in which forest animals die because of particular climatic conditions and we cannot really influence it. Nature is also harsh.

Harsh indeed. But... at seminars devoted to hunting, experienced hunters discuss that it is time to go out to the public and explain – the brown bear, increasingly common in our forests and living there in far greater numbers (190), is not the cuddly creature we sing little songs about... It is a similar story with wolves. Is nature's harshness not forgotten from time to time, and a mind-lulling fairy tale listened to instead? Clearly, city dwellers tend to be some way removed from the harshness and reality of nature, but even so.

Often a person understands and realises the real situation the moment they see bear tracks in the forest or meet a bear itself. Quite a few MKPC staff have already experienced that. The bear has no natural enemy in Latvia, the population is currently growing, the bear feels good here, the food base is sufficient, and most likely those who have not yet encountered a bear in the forest will do so.

Various assessments of the situation are heard – one from people who do not spend their daily lives in the forest and who use the forest now and then for recreation, running or mushroom picking, and another from those who work or spend time in the forest every day or live in the countryside; the latter undoubtedly have a better grasp of reality.

As for the bear, at present there is no solution to the situation and none is being offered at decision-making level; it looks as though more than one person thinks: "Never mind if the locals grumble about the damage the bear has done... It'll be fine."

What should be done? It is clear that action will be needed. Hunters, for example, believe that hunting keeps predators at a certain distance from people. Coexistence is already happening; the question is where its limits lie. I know that hunters still recall with great bitterness the bear cub near Smiltene that people actively fed and that had to be put down.

I imagine that if the growth trends in the bear population continue, we will arrive at bear hunting. As you rightly said, it will not be about trophies, but about giving the animal a sense that it needs to keep its distance. There will be no other solution. We are currently seeing a similar problem with lynx, which have quite often started staying near settlements or rural farmsteads, something that is also being noticed in the public sphere.

It should be remembered: the wealthier society becomes, the higher incomes are, the higher the standard of living becomes (whatever anyone may say, the standard of living in Latvia is undeniably rising year on year) – and under the influence of all of the above, part of society's view of forestry, hunting and agriculture too changes. Speaking about forestry, private forest owners and family forest holdings with small forest areas are vitally important in maintaining and sustaining rural areas. Whereas in the 1990s their number was around 150,000, at present, as I mentioned, it is around 116,000; consolidation is happening, but (!!!) – it must be remembered that this is small business, namely 116,000 small businesses. Forest owners are not against nature protection, but they know local conditions extremely well. The strength of forestry lies in the large body of owners, which is why MKPC representatives urge every forest owner to think two or three times before selling their property, even if that is what they have in mind.

Several years ago the MKPC organised a conference at Ogre Technical School at which a sector representative from Finland spoke. If you remember, she was asked whether a situation is possible in Finland where someone comes onto your property, finds something protected there, and the forest owner learns about it and about the consequences of the find considerably later. The question had to be repeated, because our Finnish colleague did not understand it (more precisely, she did not understand how such a situation is possible). In 2017 the LMSP translated the Finnish nature protection plan and sent it to VARAM. Silence. Over the years the conflict between forest (land) owners and the environmental sector as it is generally understood has not abated. Where has the room for cooperation gone?

There are three ministries, forest owners, consultants, hunters, officials, non-governmental organisations, activists, the media. Practically everyone, whether they know the subject or not, has something to say. The talking rolls on and on and on like the ball of yarn in the fairy tales...

A great deal has been said about the situation and the problem you mention, and forest owners are understandably not happy that, and if, someone goes onto their property without their knowledge and looks at and assesses something, after which they receive information about decisions that have already been taken.

MKPC representatives also took part in habitat mapping. In my view, it is possible to go out and assess what of value or of little value is present on a particular property even without the forest owner being there, but (!!!) the moment the assessor realises that there is something on that property worth protecting, which may result in certain restrictions on activity, explanatory work and a conversation with the owner are absolutely essential. People are different – one will ask for the most detailed explanation, another will ask only for information, a third will act differently. If we want forest owners to respect the situation, explanatory work is necessary. I will repeat myself: I would separate two things – the expert in the forest, and the explanation to the owner of what has happened (what has been found, what has been observed).

It is clear to me personally that, given the state budget situation now and in the near future, funds will not be found to compensate everything that ought to be compensated, but the situation must be explained to the forest or land owner and the best course of action recommended. A conscientious person needs neither a document nor state regulation telling them what they may or may not do on their own property.

"Quiet nature conservation". We have often heard from colleagues in the sector – I have a forest, I do not do anything there, I do not manage it, because I have no need to. It seems this has not been studied here, but "quiet nature conservation" certainly exists in Latvia too.

Owners have different aims, views and philosophies about how to manage a forest. There are quite definitely forest owners in Latvia who see their philosophy of life realised in the forest, for example with regard to climate change, biodiversity, coexistence with the forest's inhabitants and so on, which has nothing to do with timber production. That would be one view.

There are forest owners with a different view, for whom the forest is a place for obtaining timber (resources). If the state can achieve its goals by segmenting forest owners and cooperating on solutions to particular matters with the section of forest owners potentially interested in them, that is good and right. During a recent visit to Finland we learned that if the Finns see that there is a shortage of protected areas, a tender is held – inviting forest owners to apply and submit proposals. The most cost-effective proposal is then selected. Forest owners oriented towards obtaining timber resources will most likely not apply here, but others will. In my view, that is a solution.

The question is – why is good practice that has literally been laid out on the table not being introduced?

It requires funding; nothing will happen by itself. "Quiet nature conservation" will achieve certain goals, but you cannot rely on it in the long term. The Ministry of Agriculture and VARAM need to talk through the necessary solution, seeking a compromise from both sides and, once they have agreed, get on with it.

Another route I see – the VMD and the Nature Conservation Agency should take into account the work a particular forest owner has done so far and their experience of cooperation. We have many forest owners with exactly the same education as the staff of state bodies; they manage their forests in a very considered way and are able to take responsibility for the data they submit, and so on. I will repeat myself, but in future forest owners need to be trusted more – most likely not all of them at once, but starting with outstanding examples, opinion leaders who will act as a driving force for further positive change and for strengthening private forestry.