The International Year of Forest has ended 24.01

Silviculture

As at Christmas, the State Forest Management Centre (RMK) owned 11,687 land units with a total area of 1,199,312 hectares, which is 30% of the territory affected by the Estonian Land Reform.  The land area held by RMK increased by 41,000 hectares in 2011.

In 2011, in the course of forest reorganization, we took stock of 125,000 hectares of land.

We have sold the rights to cut standing timber to 1,860 clients in total of 35,000 cubic meters. Our customers are private individuals and local municipalities from all over Estonia.We started selling slash and uprooted stumps from clear cut areas to citizens in September. In total, 48 individuals bought 488 cubic metres of slash and stumps.

We completed an EU cooperation project with Finland and Latvia which had lasted for five years and amounted to 2.5 million euros. In the course of the project 35,000 heritage culture sites in 15 counties of Estonia were described.

11 new European Regional Development Fund projects were approved in 2011.  Among others, there were works as important as restoration of Endla ecological reserve water regime and restoration works of many other wetlands.Additionally, access ways to semi-natural communities in Soomaa, Alam-Pedja and Matsalu National Parks were improved.

RMK stopped offering hunting services on the hunting lands it managed and six hunting areas were leased out via public auctions.All 635 hunting permits were bought at the auction.

Forest Management

13.4 million treeswere planted to state forests this year. It is the largest figure of all times and exceeds the number of 2010 by three million plants.Almost 50% of planted trees were firs (6.1 million plants) and the other half was made up of pines (6.4 million).In addition, we planted 0.8 million birches and some alders and oaks to the state forest.

We planted new forests to three exhausted oil shale quarries in Ida-Viru county:new forests were planted to Aidu, Vanaküla and Narva quarries on 103 hectares.

More than 31,000 hectares of young forest lands was cleaned this year, which is a larger area than Lake Võrtsjärv.

Regeneration cutting was done on 8,400 hectares and thinning on more than 13,000 hectares.8,400 hectares of regeneration cutting forms 6% of all currently existing mature forest areas and 1% of total forest areas where forest management is allowed. 

We have organised the transport of about 2.9 million cubic meters of roundwood, which is up until now the biggest figure in the history of RMK.  Despite the rapid changes in the market in the second half of the year and the unfavourable climate at the end of the year, we have kept the inventory at optimum level and fulfilled contractual supply obligations to our customers.

This year, we built and reconstructed 200 km of forest roads and 15,100 hectares of land improvement systems. More specifically:140,000 cubic metres of road surface material was transported to forest roads to repair the surfacing, 12,000 km of forest roads were planed and 490 culverts replaced.   RMK manages 8,500 km of forest roads and our forest drainage systems are located on 444,205 hectares.

We carried out practical nature protection works in the amount of more than 750,000 euros, of which major activities included increasing the sustainability of maintaining Kasari meadow and Matsalu National Park.

Nature Protection and Nature Education

RMK’s leisure and protection areas were visited 1.55 million times, i.e., on a general level one can say that every Estonian citizen visits these areas at least once a year.

About half a million people went berry or mushroom picking. A bucket of berries (9.3 litres) and one and a half bucket of mushrooms (15.2 litres) were picked per each forest visitor (study by Turu-uuringute AS “Picking of berries and mushrooms in forests by Estonian people“, autumn 2011).

About 100 international events dedicated to the International Year of Forests were held, including 30 concerts, two family days and many competitions, where more than 8,000 people participated.  For instance, 9,307 students tested their knowledge in an interactive forest quiz which was introduced to diversify teaching of environmental and nature sciences. Usually the number of participating students has been between 5,000 and 6,000.

Estonia-wide forest planting day took place in May, participated by 4,000 students and teachers. Almost 160,000 new firs and pines were planted on 60 hectares of state forest land.

8,800 or more than 2/3 of all sixth grade students in Estonia, together with their teachers, used the opportunity to participate in RMK's study programme "See you in forest!" ("Kohtume metsas!").The program was linked with topics of nature in the sixth grade curriculum that mostly covers and discusses the topic of forests.

Timber distribution

In total, we sold 2.7 million cubic metres of roundwood to the timber industry and consumers.

We have sold 0.3 million cubic metres of woodchips and slash for producing 720,000 MWh, which is the amount of energy consumed by roughly 28,000 average households annually.

Nursery Management

13 million and 0.25 million plants were grown for state forests and private forest owners respectively, which is more than 3 million plants more than last year.Due to plant growing specialisation, RMK nurseries only grow bare root seedlings and AS Eesti Metsataim only containerised seedlings.

RMK invested 600,000 euro to AS Eesti Metsataim production capabilities this year.The total amount of investments in the following couple of years is more than 2.8 million euro so that the production capacity could be increased from current 6 million seedlings up to 12 million seedlings.

In cooperation with the University of Life Sciences we launched forest tree breeding progeny trials on pine.We selected and prepared four test grounds in different places in Estonia, each with a size of 10 hectares and grew first plants for progeny trials, which will be planted on test areas next spring.