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This Year's Forest Planting Season Has Come to an End

By the end of this year's planting season, the state forests managed by JSC “Latvia’s State Forests” (LVM) have been restored in an area of more than 16 thousand hectares, of which natural restoration in an area of 5300 ha. 1000 hectares more have been planted this year, as compared to last year, thus increasing the share of planting in the total volume of reforestation works.

In order to preserve the diversity of tree species in state forests, state forests have been restored with trees of different species: pine in an area of 5.4 thousand hectares, spruce – in an area of 3.5 thousand hectares, birch – in an area of 1.3 thousand hectares and black alder – in an area of 300 hectares. Natural restoration has mainly taken place with birch and aspen.

“We faced some challenges in afforestation this spring, when we started mechanized planting unusually early – already in February; however, due to unstable weather conditions, we were able to fully continue afforestation works only in April,” says Edmunds Linde, LVM Forestry Planning Manager.

“The pandemic restrictions set in the country did not have a negative impact on the process of reforestation, on the contrary – there was an availability of additional labour force. Forest is not only the safest place to relax, but also the best work environment. Therefore, we completed the spring season of forest planting works in several regions much earlier than usually,” tells the LVM Forestry Planning Manager, describing the course and challenges of this year's forest planting season.

Currently, intensive soil preparation works are underway in the forests managed by LVM for the planting season of 2021. Next year, it is expected to increase the volume of mechanized forest planting, increasing it from 300 to 1000 hectares. To achieve this goal, it is planned to attract at least six additional technical units to supplement the current two planting machines.

Mechanized forest planting is suitable for wet mineral soils and wet peat soils, where uplifts and surface water drainage are required, and reforestation with traditional methods is not possible. Forest planting machine creates special planting sites or uplifts and at the same time sets seedlings in them.

21 years have passed since the establishment of LVM; during these years, sustainable forest management has been implemented on 1.63 million hectares of state forest land, of which 1.41 million hectares are forest. During this time, reforestation has been performed on an area of 242 thousand hectares.

LVM's economic activities are carried out by maintaining and recovering forests, taking care of nature conservation, recreation opportunities and increasing timber volumes, as well as investing in expanding the forestland and developing forest infrastructure – renovation of drainage systems and forest road construction.