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

 At 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 18 thousand hectares, including natural regeneration in an area of 4.5 thousand hectares. This year, as compared to last year, 300 hectares more forests have been restored. Moreover, the amount of mechanized planting has increased significantly, reaching 720 hectares. 

“This spring was very favourable for planting. A total of 13 000 hectares were planted during the spring work season, which is 11 % more than last year. However, during the reforestation season, we encountered a challenge that forced us to look for non-standard solutions – the lack of labour and the growing volume of planting,” says Mārtiņš Gūtmanis, Executive Director of LVM Silviculture.

In 2022, a new work in forest restoration has been introduced – mechanized forest sowing; this year, 336 hectares of forest were sown this way. Next year, it is planned to restore forests in an area of 18.3 thousand hectares, including the restoration of 13.4 thousand hectares by planting and sowing. It is planned to increase the volume of mechanized sowing by 670 hectares.

23 years have passed since the establishment of LVM; during these years, sustainable forest management has been implemented in 1.63 million hectares of State forest land, of which 1.41 million hectares are covered by forest. During this time, forest restoration was carried out in an area of 275 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. During these 23 years, forest roads with a total length of 8 thousand kilometres have been built and forest drainage systems with a total length of 264 thousand hectares have been restored.