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forest ownership shall be exercised in such a manner as to ensure
their ecological, social and productive functions. According to
the Forest Act, the owner of a forest must therefore manage the
forest in accordance with regulations, management plans and
administrative decisions. They must also allow free access to and
movement in the forest to others and allow beekeeping, hunting
and the recreational gathering of fruits, herbs, mushrooms and
wild animals in accordance with regulations.
The National Forest Programme (NFP) and plans for forest
management represent important prerequisites for achieving the
aims of the Forest Act. The Forest Act stipulates that they shall be
aimed at finding the balance between the preservation of natural
stands, production of timber and provision of all other benefits
society expects from the forests, in line with the general orienta-
tion towards close-to-nature forest management. They also have
to contain measures for successful natural regeneration of stands
and enhancement of resistance of forests to various disturbances,
and have to take appropriate advantage of natural productivity
of forest sites.
The forest planning system consists of four levels: national,
regional, management unit and stand. The levels are very much
interrelated in the sense that upper levels take into account lower
levels and vice versa. The system also represents a cognitive
approach to forest management, where reactions of the structure of
the forests to management activities are periodically and systemati-
cally observed in order to achieve the optimum ratio between inputs
and outputs from the forest ecosystems in terms of all
their economic, environmental and social functions.
On every level, the model of the plan-do-check-act
cycle is applied, where ‘plan’ means setting objectives,
guidelines and measures for achieving the objectives,
‘do’ means simply execution of the planned activities,
‘check’ means analysis of the effectiveness of the meas-
ures in relation to the objectives set in the plan and
‘act’ means setting new, corrected objectives for the next
planning period. The planning periods for regional and
management unit plans are ten years, while the NFP
and operational level plans are renewed when the
‘check’ phase shows the objectives and guidelines might
not be appropriate any more.
The participation of stakeholders is crucial for
the effectiveness of the forest planning system. On
the national and regional levels, stakeholders are
more numerous, while on the management unit and
stand level, stakeholders are mainly forest owners.
According to the Forest Act, they have the right to
participate in the procedures for adopting forest
management and wildlife management plans and
in the preparation of forest silviculture plans. Their
needs, proposals and requests have to be respected as
much as possible and must be consistent with ecosys-
temic and legal restrictions.
Close-to-nature forest management mimics natural structures and processes, which are studied in remnants of primary forests
Image: Lado Kutnar