With drier weather setting in, AS “Latvijas valsts meži” (LVM) can increasingly get on with the young-stand protection work that began in the first half of August in the young stands it manages, shielding the young trees from damage caused by animals of the deer family. The work was significantly affected by prolonged rainfall and wet conditions in the forest.

Two types of work are currently under way in young stands in state forests – protection of regenerated areas and protection of the stems of young trees. Protection of regenerated areas is carried out mainly in pine stands one to three years old, using environmentally friendly repellents of natural composition. Stem protection, meanwhile, is carried out on pines at four to seven years of age, when the stems of the young trees are protected from damage using various methods, such as fitting spirals.

Katrīna Silva Mierkalne, Head of Silviculture Planning at LVM, explains:

“This year the work is particularly difficult – the whole summer has been cold and rainy, but repellents may only be used in dry weather, when the trees are not wet. A further complication was that, because of the unusual weather, this year the new pine shoots became lignified later than in other years, so the work had to be planned carefully, assessing which areas could be treated and in which the work still had to be postponed.

What is more, because of the summer rains there is still water in the forest, which considerably hampers the day-to-day work of our service providers – moving about in young stands is difficult, because it is wet even where under normal conditions it would be dry, and the ditches cannot cope quickly with such a large volume of water, so some are full of water and hard to cross.”

Young-stand protection across Latvia is planned this year over a total area of 25 000 hectares – protection of regenerated areas with repellents will be carried out on around 20 000 hectares, and stem protection on approximately 5000 hectares.

The largest volume of protection work is planned in the LVM Ziemeļkurzeme region – protection of regenerated areas on 3500 hectares and stem protection on 2000 hectares.