Involving the owners of small private forests in active management
Overview
In Europe, the forest area of small private forests is underutilised. The consequences are (i) a lack of resources for the bioeconomy, (ii) uncertainty regarding the provision of ecosystem services, and (iii) inconsistent monitoring and assessment of forest health.
As a result of structural change, societies are moving towards urbanisation and the area of unmanaged or poorly managed forests is increasing. From a forestry perspective, this trend is problematic and many regional and national stakeholders are trying to involve the owners of small forests in active management. This is under the assumption that forest management makes a positive contribution to forest functions (i) to (iii) above. The obstacles are well known: Management of small forests generates insignificant income, non-expert forest owners have diffuse expectations of forest management, and lack of knowledge about the required techniques.
The ENGAGING project identified and analysed successful and failed attempts to promote active management of small private forests by owners. Based on this, recommendations for regionally relevant campaigns to strengthen the engagement of small forest owners in forest management were to be derived.
The objectives of the project were: (1) to characterise small forest owners, (2) to assess their current and future relevance, (3) to investigate the motivation of private forest owners to use their forests, (4) to assess the degree of success of past campaigns to motivate private forest owners, (5) to develop best practice examples and guidelines for information provision, access to advice, management support and other measures. Our task in the ENGAGING project was to assess the situation of private forest owners in Switzerland and to co-lead the working group analysing Objective 3.
Period
2018–2020
Funding
- European Forest Institute (EFI) external pageNetwork Fundcall_made
Coordination
- Robert Jandl (Austrian Forest Research Center)
Collaborators
- Dr Jerylee Wilkes-Allemann (NARP)
- Dr Eva Lieberherr (NARP)
- Dr Astrid Zabel (Uni Bern)