2018

Employees of JSC "Latvia's State Forests" Take Part in Fire Extinguishing Works

Already for several days, employees of JSC "Latvia's State Forests" (LVM) have been actively involved in the extinguishing of a fire damaging a forest and peat bogs in Valdgale Rural Territory.

On 19 July, 27 employees of LVM North Kurzeme region forestry, planning and logging divisions got involved in the fire limiting works. The company's light trucks, which have water tanks and pumps in their cargo compartments, are also involved in the fire extinguishing process.

Similarly, three harvesters and forwarders at the disposal of LVM service provider SIA "Niedrāji" are used for the fire-fighting works. Using these vehicles, the entire planned extension area of the road has been sawn, but due to the strong smothering it is not possible to continue the work in the direction of Stikli village.

It has already been reported that the fire, which originally broke out in an economic peat bog, has now reached the forest area managed by LVM, where Stiklu Purvi Nature Reserve is located. The fire has hit the nature reserve regulated zone, the natural park area, as well as the nature reserve area, which prohibits forestry activities and which is difficult to access with fire-fighting transport.

LVM would like to remind that there is still a high risk of fire in all forests in Latvia; therefore we should be extra careful. There is a great risk that every fag-end dropped by a cherry-picker or mushroom-picker may result in a forest fire.

Since its foundation in 1999, Joint Stock Company "Latvia’s State Forests" implementing sustainable forest management has paid one billion euros to state and local government budgets. 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 forest land and developing forest infrastructure - renovation of drainage systems and forest road construction. The volume of timber in the forests managed by LVM increases by 12 million cubic metres annually.