Risks of the wood-producing function of forests in areas with the special statute of protection

Abstract

Fulfilling the wood-producing function of forests can be understood as a removal of wood mass by logging operations from the forest environment usually for the purpose of its commercial use. The activity can be implemented in all stages of forest development. Positive economic effects are usually expected. Management in specially protected areas requires to concentrate on the preferential fulfi lment of protection objectives in affecting the forest ecosystem. In this context, the use of the wood-producing function of forests is often comprehended as controversial. But it has been proved that the maintenance of the forest condition corresponding to the ideas of fulfi lment of protection objectives requires differentiated management, application of silvicultural as well as logging measures, viz. even in ‘measure-free’ zones. Many strategies of management for specially protected regions have been formulated, however, evaluation or quantifi cation of risks of the activity from the aspect of danger and fulfi lling the objective of protection is missing. The paper deals with this problem, plans the methodology of evaluation and quantifi cation of risks of using the wood-producing function of forests in specially protected areas with a special statute of protection – areas falling under the NATURA 2000 directive. The quantifi cation of risks and specifi cation of the limiting values for evaluation of various technologies were studied by an expert method in 2000–2001 in eleven small-scale and large-scale protected areas in the Czech Republic.