A Study on the Improvement Plan of the Creation and Management of HEALING FORESTS

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to identify and analyze the current status of the creation and management of healing forests in Korea to derive the improvement plan. Methods: Based on the hypothesis that there will be differences in the creation and management of each operator, 10 items including annual status, regional status, location standard, size, facility status, number of visitors, number of program users, management entity, construction cost, and operation status were investigated and analyzed. Results: The number of healing forests has been steadily increasing, and the area of composition has been found to be large. By region, Jeolla-do has the largest number of places, 7 places (25%), Gyeonggi-do (30%) has the largest area of composition, and the average area of composition is more than twice as large as the national public. In the forest species of healing by location criteria, coniferous forests were preferred, and trees of age class IV had higher frequency and area. There is no difference in the accessibility of each operator to healing forests by size and facilities, and there were many healing forest paths as forest healing facilities. The average number of program users and average visitors per year has been decreasing since 2015. According to the status of each management entity, the Western Regional Forest Service manages the most with a total of nine national and seven public places, while the Eastern Regional Forest Service manages two places. The average creation cost of the healing forest is KRW 4.5 billion/place for the national healing forest, KRW 6.4 billion/place for the public healing forest, and in the case of the average creation cost per area, KRW 0.6 billion/ha for the national healing forest and KRW 0.9 billion/ha for the public healing forest, and the national healing forest is lower. In the case of operation status, the usage fees are in the order of public, national, and private, and the National Forest Service is operated by the Korea Forest Welfare Institute under the Korea Forest Service. Conclusion: ‘Based on the improvement plan for healing forest creation and management, the evaluation items for healing forest creation and operation to introduce a certification system for healing forests should be presented, research on revitalization measures should be conducted, and many people should benefit from forest welfare services.