Report: Wood Reserves in Slovakia Rising Due to High Age of Forests
Bratislava, August 21 (TASR) – Overall reserves of wood, as well as wood reserves per hectare of forest land have increased in Slovakia, an Agriculture and Rural Development Ministry report for 2015 has revealed.
“The ongoing increase in wood reserves is mainly due to a higher than normal representation of relatively older forests with ages exceeding 70 years. The current age structure of forests is the main factor in the current trend of growing logging opportunities and actual logging,” states the report.
Compared to the previous year, overall wood reserves in Slovak forests increased by 1.52 million cubic metres in 2015, reaching a total of 478.12 million cubic metres without bark. Meanwhile, the average wood reserves per hectare of forest land reached 247 cubic metres.
“According to a prognosis, sustainable wood logging could reach 9 million cubic metres [per year] until its estimated culmination around 2030,” reads the report.
Wood logging in 2015 reached 9.14 million cubic metres, a drop of 1.8 percent year-on-year. Nevertheless, it was 18 percent higher than in 2013.
“The increase in wood logging in 2015 compared to 2012 and 2013 was caused by a high share of disaster-response logging, making up as much as 5.21 million cubic metres, i.e. 57 percent of total logging,” stated the Agriculture Ministry.
Conifer forests accounted for 53 percent of logging in 2015, with three quarters of this kind of wood represented by disaster-response logging.
When it comes to the share of state and private forests in overall logging, state forests provided 4.71 million cubic metres of wood in 2015, while the rest came from private areas.
