Agriculture Ministry considering lowering felling age of trees

RIGA - The Agriculture Ministry is assessing the possibility of lowering the felling age of trees, Agriculture Minister Armands Krauze (Union of Greens and Farmers) told LETA.

Krauze referred to an assignment from the State Chancellery, instructing the ministry to consider amendments to a series of regulations related to sustainable management of forests.

"We need new forests, we need to plant new forests. Old forests are, in fact, emitting emissions. In plain language - a tree stands in the forest, it withers, falls, and rots. We do not want trees to rot in forests," Krauze explained, adding that forest policy as a whole must be revised in order to achieve climate goals. This includes considering the possibility of cutting trees at an earlier age.

According to the minister, forests across almost all of Europe have become a source of emissions rather than a carbon sink, which in the long term jeopardizes the achievement of climate goals. Forest management should be evaluated not in the short term, but in the long term - at least over a 50-year period, he said.

If forests are managed in a sustainable manner, lowering the felling age will also benefit the state budget as increased logging volumes will boost revenue from Latvijas Valsts Mezi (Latvian State Forests) company, while the forestry and wood-processing industries will handle larger volumes of timber and contribute more in taxes. Higher logging volumes would also create new jobs and stimulate economic growth, said Krauze.

He also said though that the Agriculture Ministry would not propose to reduce trees' felling age merely to fill budget gaps if sustainability could not be guaranteed.

Current felling ages date back to the Soviet times - for example, spruce felling age is set at 80 years, yet the spruce bark beetle begins to damage them at around 50 years, and by 60 many spruce stands are already degraded.

Therefore Krauze believes that felling ages should be reconsidered in order to meet climate goals and make it possible to plant of new spruce forests. Existing spruces could instead be used in the economy to create higher value-added products, rather than being used simply for firewood, the minister argued.

Krauze noted that in state forests, approximately 120 million cubic meters of timber is currently mature or overgrown, adding that harvesting this amount would take around 15-17 years.

"Therefore, if anyone says this is unsustainable or that we are cutting too many trees - it is not true. In Latvia, forest growth exceeds felling. Our goal is to achieve sustainability, because every forest we leave aside is a loss for future generations."