Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

The Forestry Act was altered in Sweden the 1st of January 1994, replacing the 1980
forest legislation. Several deregulations were made and one of them was the lowering
of the legal minimum age (LMA) for final felling.
The authorities naturally show interest in the effects of the new legislation, and the
present thesis is a contribution in this respect. The work was initiated and
commissioned by the County Forestry Board of Vasterbotten in November 1996.
The main purpose was to study the behaviour of forest owners with respect to the new
LMA, but a more general attitude research about the LMA was included as well. The
issues were studied for eight (of sixteen) County Ranger Districts in the county of
Vasterbotten. Forest owners were classified as private or companies and as inland or
coastal.
The results are based on a sample of about 40 final fellings from each of the two
owner categories and each district. In a subset, the forests cut were aged between the
old and the new LMA, and the correspondning set of forest owners constitutes the
sample for the the attitude research.
The estimated percentage in area of the final fellings that falls between the present and
the former LMA is marked but varies considerably between owner categories and
especially between districts within category. The estimated percentage varies between
0 % and 60 % over all districts and owner categories. Averaged over districts the
percentage varies between 17 % and 25 % for the four categories. The highest figure
was obtained for coastal private forest owners, while the other three categories
showed similar values. Noteworthy is the large and significant differences between the
districts, for each of the four categories.
The results of the attitude research indicates that roughly 50 % of the respondents
were not aware of the lowering of theLMA and 75 % of the respondents were not
aware of that the stand they cut were below the old LMA.
Seemingly, inland private owners are more aware of the changes in the law. It appears
that they act more like the legislator intended. An explanation to this could be a good
communication with the County Ranger Districts. In general terms a better
communication between forest owners and the authorities would improve the
implementation of the forestry legislation.