Field Workshop in Komi – Practical Work of the Boreal Forest Platform Starts
The Silver Taiga Foundation together with WWF Russia and Mondi Syktyvkar acted as a co-organizer of the field workshop “Intensive and sustainable forestry”, which was recently held in the Komi Republic and gave a start to the practical work of the Boreal forest platform – an expert platform for transition to the intensive and sustainable forestry, including the development of the required legal background.
– We think that a shift towards an intensive forestry is long overdue, – the Foundation Director Yury Pautov comments on the Silver Taiga participation in this initiative. – Our Foundation began to work on this in 2008, when, under the Silver Taiga initiative, forest fund zoning began in the Komi Model Forest and the areas of intensive and extensive forest management were allocated. This initiative was further supported by the Forest Committee of the Komi Republic, and later the representatives of LLC “Tekhkarta” and consulting center “Tefra” divided the entire territory of the republic into areas of intensive and extensive forest management.
An intensive forestry for us is, on the one hand, a transition to the real management of the forest territory aiming to increase its profitability in the interests of business, state, as the forest owner, and the people, living on this territory; on the other hand – it’s a reduction of the load on high conservation value forests, low-disturbed forest massifs, the territories of which are decreasing every year.
Around thirty specialists – representatives of forest business and NGOs, science and state forest service – from different regions of Russia, and also from Finland, have taken part in the workshop.
According to the estimations made by the participants, the big advantage of the workshop was the fact that they got a chance to discuss critical issues – advantages and disadvantages of the suggested approaches – directly in forest. For example, on the Komi Model Forest routes, they could see and evaluate the results of the commercial thinning conducted 20 years ago in the spruce forests according to the advanced Nordic CTL technology, but using the old “soviet” standards, discuss the expediency of these standards and ways how to change them. Besides, the participants had a chance to discuss potential inefficiencies and issues related to the intensive forestry introduction that need to be considered in advance. These problems are linked, for example, to a short-term planning horizon in organizing the forest regeneration on the logging sites, a wrong consideration of the natural forest dynamics types, planning of the forest use and cultivation activities only on the level of a specific logging site taking no account of an adjoining forest landscape…
The intensive forestry is a real way to the sustainable forest management and preservation of highly-valued low-disturbed forest massifs. Now it is especially important and relevant for the certified companies because of Resolution №65 of the FSC General Assembly concerning low-disturbed forests that was approved at the end of 2014.
Today, the Boreal forest platform integrates the intensive forestry efforts of a number of organizations including forest business and non-governmental structures. The nearest steps in this direction in the Komi Republic are being planned cooperatively by the Silver Taiga Foundation, LLC “Tekhkarta”, “Lesnaya alternativa”, WWF Russia, and Mondi Syktyvkar.
