Challenges and best practices of forest innovation in EU regions

The European Committee of Regions, in co-operation with the European Forest Institute and the RoseWood project, hosted the conference on Regional Forest Innovation on the 13th November in Brussels.

The first session of the conference addressed the challenges and issues linked to innovation in the forest sector as well as tools to support it at the EU level, while the second part showcased some regional best practice examples.

Innovative solutions in state forestry were presented by two EUSTAFOR’s members from Latvia and Poland.

Ilga Bērzkalna, Head of Development Latvia’s State Forests (LVM), presented the latest developments in Latvia’s state forests and innovative applications such as using the new, effective and environment-friendly coating Conniflex to protect the forest seedlings from pests before they are used in planting new forests. Another interesting example was the temporary wooden panel roads that are used for the areas where forest machinery could not be used due to the lack of regular roads. LVM also works a lot on innovations in harvesting, remote sensing data, machine learning, in collaboration with academic and research institutions. The presentation can be accessed here.

Tomasz Majerowski, Specialist of Lasy Państwowe, presented the modern silviculture techniques that are used in the Polish state forests, together with the prevention, counteracting and reduction of threats related to forest fires. In 2017 the Polish state forests encountered a great forest damage caused by a hurricane. This so-called Disaster of millennium required extraordinary measures such as using photo-optical methods for measuring wood, where operator measures the field of the wood stack wall. The presentation can be found here.

Other important issues such as the lack of qualified work force, current forest damages across Europe, lack of funds for forests and rural areas and the important need of the EU Forest strategy post 2020 were raised by participants and were shortly discussed in time reserved for the Q&A.

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