Forest owner is more than her goal: a qualitative typology of Lithuanian owners

Abstract

A c c e p t e d M a n u s c r i p t 2 AcknowledgementsThis study was performed within the frames of the research program INTEGRAL -futureoriented integrated forest management of European forests, funded by the European Commission's 7 th framework programme, grant agreement n° FP7-282887. AbstractIn contrast to quantitative surveys up to date, this study employs in-depth interviews and qualitative analyses aiming to provide detailed contextualized portrayals of private forest owners (PFO) in Lithuania, where forest ownership underwent crucial changes in the last two decades. We scrutinized narrations of 18 owners, focusing on the background and goals of forest possession, actually applied management practices and informants' future plans. Content analysis of the narrations revealed three classes of goals: ideational rationale, i.e. immaterial justification for owning and managing forest; financial goals referring to monetary benefits from selling forest products; and own material use for household needs. Reported practices differ widely among PFO, ranging from largely absent management to intensive silvicultural regimes. Syntheses of each informant's goals and practices enabled discerning four PFO types. Forest Businessmen typically own largest estates (>100 ha) and regard forest as an investment to get long-term financial benefits; they resort to forest management for timber and often intend to enlarge their possessions. Household Foresters primarily use timber for own needs, regularly applying selective tree cutting; such forestry results in frequent but small-scale management interventions. Passive Forest Lovers aspire to recreational or environmental values, being largely uninterested in timber harvesting. Ad Hoc Owners usually are small-scale, have vague goals and rarely engage in forest management. The study concludes with discussing policy implications of the identified diversity of PFO.

Spatial Pattern of Climate Change Effects on Lithuanian Forestry

“…Therefore, in principle, this makes the regional branch of the state forest enterprise the most suitable unit for forecasts in state forests. Management of private forests in Lithuania is independent of state forest management, even though it is under the same ideological and legal forestry framework as state forests [73]. We discuss the development trends and the climate impacts aggregating all forests that geographically located inside the management area of the regional branch of the state forest enterprise.…”

Economic Forest Sustainability: Comparison between Lithuania and Sweden

“…Such an assessment is largely impossible at reasonable precision, given the large variety of estate and forest characteristics coupled with highly individualized sets of goals by every owner [22,23]. Neither is it in the interest of this study to see how profitability is affected by the structural differences of ownership, such as the average estate size, or by contextual economic variables, such as different management costs and timber price structures.…”

Knowledge use in the management of privately owned forests: a focus on decision support services for multi-objective forest use

“…In article I, this well-known method flaw was at least partly overcome with our strategy of also inquiring owners about their desired ways to manage their forests in upcoming years, and these two typologies were combined in the analysis to create more concrete understanding about forest management preferences. In article III, the forest owner survey employed open-ended questions to explore the views about the decision support service to overcome possible misunderstandings of the statements (Stanislovaitis et al 2015). The probability of participants censoring their speech in the focus groups and training workshops to ensure social acceptability was evaluated as small because most participants knew each other already prior to data collection and the atmosphere in the discussions was relaxed and open.…”