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Non-industrial private-forest owners: possibilities for increasing adoption of close-to-nature forest management

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Abstract

The concept of close-to-nature management combines an economic use of forests with nature conservation. Today, this compromise between central interests in forest management is seen as an appropriate model for the majority of the forestland in Germany. In attempting to implement the concept nationwide, the category of privately owned forests, which make up 46% of Germany’s forested area, has received increasing political attention. The adoption of close-to-nature forestry practices within private forests is difficult to describe due to exceedingly diverse owner-specific factors. Applying a socio-psychological behavioural model that combines the theory of planned behaviour, the cultural theory and the modernisation theory, this article presents an analysis of how non-industrial private-forest (NIPF) owners in the Black Forest region of Germany assess and implement close-to-nature forestry practices. The study is based on a written survey of approximately 900 randomly selected owners of forestlands ranging in size from 0.1–200 ha. The main factors identified that affect the adoption of close-to-nature forestry practices include perceptions of forest conditions and of opportunities to influence these conditions as well as the influences of social surroundings on the forest owners. Owners were classified into three types based on multiple characteristic features: economically interested, conceptually interested, and uninterested forest owners. Based on these results, opportunities to encourage NIPF owners to use close-to-nature forestry practices were explored.

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Notes

  1. Concerning the opportunities and possibilities for linking these models belonging to different “schools of thought”, see Chai (1997).

  2. See Röhm (1957) and Sick (1981) for a detailed description of inheritance systems in the Black Forest region. Where forestland is passed down as a whole to one person, this land is usually part of a mixed enterprise with agriculture and forestry and, due to its relatively large size, enables the owner to subsist on it. In contrast, partitioned inheritance of forestland tends to lead to very small property units. Thus, land owners in these regions typically are not full-time farmers and often even leave the region for jobs in the cities. For a general survey of the extensive effects of different inheritance patterns see also Cole and Wolf (1999).

  3. e.g. Judmann (1998) 21%; Becker and Borchers (2000) 29%; Ziegenspeck (2002) 26%, Schaffner (2001) 28%.

  4. It has to be pointed out again that close-to-nature management implies active human influence and does not have unmanaged wilderness areas as its goal. The interesting question arises as to whether the forestland of uninterested owners can be seen as meeting the claim for a certain percentage of completely unmanaged forests in Germany (see e.g. Köpf 1998).

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  1. Institute for Forest and Environmental Policy, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität, Tennenbacher Str. 4, 79106, Freiburg, Germany

    Claudia Bieling

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Bieling, C. Non-industrial private-forest owners: possibilities for increasing adoption of close-to-nature forest management. Eur J Forest Res 123, 293–303 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10342-004-0042-6

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