2020

Forest Planting Season Starts Unusually Early This Year

The warm winter this year has allowed JSC “Latvia's State Forests” (LVM) to start the spring planting and reforestation season unusually early. The first hectare of young trees has already been machine-planted in LVM Northern Kurzeme region, and the traditional forest restoration in light sandy soils has also been started.

“This is a unique year in the history of LVM since we have started the planting season in February! Although current weather conditions allow for planting, we are still careful with possible frost and high humidity, which can adversely affect the growth of young trees. Therefore, we plan to start reforestation in all regions with full capacity in mid-March,” says Edmunds Linde, LVM Forestry Planning Manager.

This year, we will plant young trees in an area of more than 10 200 hectares.

Mechanized forest planting is suitable for wet mineral soils and wet peat soils requiring uplifts and surface water drainage, where reforestation by conventional methods is not possible. The forest planter makes special planting areas or uplifts and at the same time sets in seedlings.

Since its foundation of LVM, 20 years have passed; since then, sustainable forest management has been implemented in 1.63 million hectares of state forest land, of which 1.41 million hectares are forest. During this period, 225 319 hectares of forest have been restored, including 135 313 hectares through planting and sowing.

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.