Small forest

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In Austria, small forest refers to the forests of companies with up to 200 hectares of cadastral forest . 99% of forest owners in Austria are small forest owners .

Definition of small forest - rural forest

In general, small-scale forest and community forest - as opposed to the forest owned by the forestry enterprises and in particular the Austrian Forestry Commission  deems the same -. The specification of 200 hectares of cadastral forest area (type of ownership of the forest inventory ) or the small forest owner as “a person who owns forest less than 200 hectares” does not necessarily do justice to the situation of farm forests and private property in Austria.

  • Companies operated by legal entities also fall into this size class, e.g. B. Agricultural communities and communal forests (around 12% of this size category) as well as other private property by non-agricultural entrepreneurs
  • The agricultural statistics consider the totality of forest holdings of natural persons including large private forest (around 360,000 ha) as rural forest ownership

The forest area of ​​farms in Austria is given according to agricultural statistics with 1.73 million hectares, the small forest with 1.56 million hectares, while the Austrian forest inventory shows 2.13 million hectares of small forest. In order to remedy this problem, the cadastre is currently being compared with the exact satellite data of the European forest maps.

There are a total of 170,000 forest owners ( agriculture and forestry businesses total around 187,000), 53 percent of whom are small forest owners , among whom the average forest area is 9.2 hectares per business. However, the proportion of private forests is - well above the European average - around 80%, and this 80% is distributed among almost 150,000 private owners. The average farm size in the agricultural sector is 35.0 ha (2007), which means that for the small forest owner, 3 ⁄ 4 of a farm is generally used for agriculture , 1 ⁄ 4 for forestry - this is also a special feature across Europe.

Small forest ownership as an economic factor

In Austria an area of ​​around four million hectares is forested (1998), 83% of which is productive forest, around half of Austria's forests are managed on a small scale.

On average over the period 1992–2001, 4.3  m3 / ha of small forest was used and around 9.7 family manpower hours per hectare were invested in forest management, with the assessed family work accounting for around half of the costs. The forest yield per hectare was an Austrian average of € 300. The average timber yield / m3 in the small forest is around 90–95% of the comparative value from the large forest. In 2006, a total of 11.48 million cubic meters of harvest were felled in the small forest, compared to 5.85 million cubic meters of harvest in forest operations. Thus, the small forest shows itself to be an important economic factor in Austria, which as a value creation resource exceeds the large forest and whose potential has not yet been fully developed.

As a result of social change and the associated reduction in the number of farms, the group of "new small forest owners away from the forest" has emerged. These are small forest owners who predominantly inherit the forest but who do not actively manage their forest. In the course of urbanization, the forest owners have often emigrated from the rural region and are active in other professions. Your small forest is of no economic importance and there is little interest in using wood.

Climate-smart management in small forests

The climate change brings higher temperatures and altered precipitation patterns for the small forest. Higher temperatures and trees weakened by drought increase the infestation of pests or pathogens (e.g. book printers or soot bark disease ). The forest must adapt to the changes and be able to cope with numerous demands. In an actively managed forest, problems can be identified early and countermeasures can be taken in good time. In the case of climate-smart management, the forest owner supports the resistance to future storms, drought or forest fires by replanting tree species that are adapted to the new site conditions. Not only does the forest owner secure a timber yield through adaptation and bind CO 2 from the atmosphere, the efficient use of wood as a renewable, climate-friendly raw material and energy source makes a significant contribution to reducing anthropogenic CO 2 emissions in his private forest .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ BMNT: Sustainable Forest Management in Austria, Austrian Forest Report 2015 . Ed .: Federal Ministry for Sustainability and Tourism. Vienna January 2015, p. 81 .
  2. ↑ E. Kvarda: Urban forest owners: attitudes and behavioral dispositions of 'traditional' and 'new' forest owners with special consideration of the restoration of degraded forest ecosystems. unpublished Script. Vienna: Institute for Socio-Economics of Forestry and Wood Management, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, 2000, p. 205
  3. ^ P. Schwarzbauer: Study documents for market research and market analysis 2005/06. Institute for Marketing and Innovation, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, 2005, p. 36 ( Archived copy ( memento of the original dated February 25, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.wiso.boku.ac.at
  4. ↑ a b c Walter Sekot: Business management in the small forest - nothing precise is not known. In: forstzeitung 1/2005 ( web document , pdf)
  5. ↑ Eurostat TBRFA 2000, according to Austria's forest is firmly in private hands ( Memento of the original from July 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.waldwissen.net archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , waldwissen.net, June 9, 2015.
  6. ↑ Who owns the forest? Dossier in: Wienerzeitung online, undated (2015; information on the 2015 Forestry Yearbook ).
  7. ↑ Federal Agency for Agricultural Economics (ed.): Green Report 2010 . especially 3. Agricultural structures and employment , p. 64–82 ( pdf chapter 3. , land.lebensministerium.at [accessed on July 9, 2011]).
  8. ↑ Entry on forest, in Austria in the Austria Forum  (in the AEIOU Austria Lexicon )
  9. ↑ Walter Sekot: Small- scale private forest: Small is beautiful In: forstzeitung 1/2003 ( web document , pdf)
  10. ↑ Logging at record height in 2006 - successful wood mobilization in small forests . Austria's forestry, Ministry of Life
  11. ^ Gerhard Weiss, Christian Bach: Wood mobilization strategies based on a forest owner survey . In: Federal Ministry for Agriculture and Forestry, Environment and Water Management (Hrsg.): Rural area . Born 2007. Vienna, S. 12 ( bmnt.gv.at ).
  12. ↑ Climate-Smart Forestry | European Forest Institute. Retrieved November 13, 2019 .