0722-B2
E.Z. Baskent[1], S. Köse and S. Keles
The forest management system of a country gives the philosophy, principles and direction to be followed in the sustainable management of forest ecosystems. Turkey's system, which was initiated in the 1960s with the help of European counterparts, still focuses on commodity production. With 20.7 million ha of forested areas, the country has several distinct biogeographic regions, each with its own endemic species and natural ecosystems, providing major flyways for millions of migratory birds and containing 75% of the plant species that occur across Europe. Its management is therefore of crucial importance to the rest of the world.
This paper presents the current management philosophy, the regulations, the socio-cultural and organizational structure, and the implementation of management activities across the country. The paper then gives a critique of the system, keeping in mind the sustainable forest management concept, documents the major pitfalls of the system encountered during the preparation and the implementation of management plans, and provides some avenues for sound management. It concludes that the management system is of an outdated neo-classic European style that focuses on a short-sighted area regulation with wood production and calls for urgent changes in the planning concept, with a move towards holistic management of various forest values based on ecosystem sustainability.
Forests of Turkey have long been exploited to meet wood supply demands and generate national income. By 1960s, forests were managed mostly with a single-tree selection silvicultural system regardless of the biological characteristics of existing commercial trees (Efendioðlu and Zýk 1993). For example, uneven-aged management practices were applied to forests composed solely of light demanding trees (e.g., pine forests) even though those forests reflect single-layered even-aged stand structures. Unregulated and anomalous forest structures were created across the country leaving the forest managers with great dilemma (Köse and Baºkent 1996).
Realizing the detrimental consequences of inappropriate management actions of the time, even-aged management practices were introduced immediately after 1963 (Özdemir 1968). This was an unprecedented decision in the history of Turkish forest management. While there were high expectations for the new management approach to overcome the existing management problems, the expectations quickly faded away. Foresters attempted only to meet the allowable cut levels, mandated by, and determined in management plans by applying various forms of clear-cut management action. They unwittingly neglected the renewal of the harvested areas due to heavy administrational duties, short supply of seedlings in nurseries, ill-equipped technical foresters and lack of a control mechanism. As a result, many clear-cut areas were left untreated, exposing them to harsh natural disturbances such as weed competition, soil erosion, and wind blow-down. Thus, the idea of regeneration by either natural succession or plantation was virtually overlooked.
It was after 1971 that both uneven-aged management methods for intolerant trees dominated forests and even-aged for the rest of the forests were implemented across the country. The planning period was 20 years from 1971 to 1990 (10 years for Calabrian pine forests). In 1983, however, before the planning cycle was over, a new forest inventory with revised management plans was initiated due to unsuccessful implementation practices such as inexperienced foresters, large clear-cut blocks, no vegetation control on clear-cut areas, high grading, clear cutting on steep slopes, and over-harvesting the accessible and social-pressure free sites. Centuries of misuse, mismanagement and neglect have led to either conversion of green healthy vegetation into brush, steppe, bare lands or degraded and an unregulated forest. Nowadays, however, a number of international initiatives have just been considered in pilot areas with the focus of establishing forest information system and preparing multiple use forest management plans.
This paper, therefore, presents the current management philosophy, principles, regulations, socio-cultural and organizational structure, and implementation of management activities across the country. The, it critiques the system on the basis of global sustainable forest management initiatives, documents the major pitfalls of the system encountered during the preparation and the implementation of management plans, and provides some avenues for sound management.
Turkish forests are diverse and rich in terms of forest composition and structure. They include both managed and pristine natural mixed forests, dominated by softwood such as pine, fir, spruce and hardwood such as beech, oak, alder, walnut, hornbeam. Forest management plans are prepared to manage the forest for timber production given the fact that more than half of the rural population of the country lives near the forest and depends on the region's forest resources (Anonymous 1980).
Turkey has 75% of the number of plant species that occur in the whole of Europe. One third of Turkish flora, which is more than twice as diverse as those of neighboring countries, is found only in Turkey. The country has several distinct biogeographic regions, each with its own endemic species and natural ecosystems. These include Caucasian mountain mixed temperate rain forests and alpine ecosystems of the North East Black Sea Coast; steppe grasslands of the Central Anatolian plateau; and the European and the Mediterranean regions, which, respectively, include probably the largest remaining stands of pristine alluvial and Cyprus forests. In addition, one of the three major flyways for millions of migratory birds, which move between the Western Palearctic and Africa each year, passes through Turkey (World Bank 1998).
The forest area in Turkey occupies 26.6 % (20.6 million ha) of total land area in Turkey. 80.2 % of total forest area is managed for timber production; about 15.8 % is allocated as conservation area including forest recreation sites and protection forests. But only 48.3 percent of managed forest is productive and the rest (51.7%) is degraded forests, rangelands or eroded areas. Furthermore, a very small part of total forest area (4.0 %) is allocated to biodiversity conservation, e.g. national parks, nature parks, nature conservation areas, nature monuments, seed stands, gene conservation forests, cloned seed orchards and specially protected areas. On the other hand, about 91.6 % of Turkish forests are natural forests, and the rest (8.4 %) is the plantation forests mostly planted on the degraded areas and open spaces of existing forests. The productive high forests cover about 39.7% of total forest area. The productive forests are mainly composed of coniferous species (54%) at higher elevations and broadleaved species (46%) at lower elevations. Among coniferous are pine, fir, spruce, juniper and cedar, and among hardwoods beech, oak, chestnut, hornbeam and alder. The standing tree stem volume in Turkey is about 1.2 billion m3, and the volume increment is about 34,270,000 m3 (Konukçu 2001).
The planning process is centralized in Turkey in that forest management plans (strategic and tactical plans combined) are primarily prepared by the planning department at the headquarters of the General Directorate of Forestry. The plans must be prepared based on management guidelines set by the department which are, in fact, set of regulations to be followed by law. Figure 1 depicts the management planning process in Turkey.
The process starts with a full forest inventory to create forest cover type maps through 1/15,000 infrared aerial photos and to determine standing growing stock and increment. Stands are discriminated based on three criteria only: species mix, crown closure and development stages. Circular plots, whose sizes range from 400 m2 to 800 m2 depending on crown close, are distributed over the forest 300 by 300 meters intervals. Site conditions are only observed and comprehensive classification is not carried out. The inventory data are then compiled and the final cover type maps are generated.
Management plans are prepared based on planning guidelines which are just full of instructions with a number of tables that the planner must fill in. Since management design stage does not exist in the process and the process is centralized across the country very little door is left for the foresters in making decisions. Classical forest regulation of area control method is used for even-aged forests and Hufnagel´s size class method is used to regulate uneven-aged forests dominated by shade tolerant trees such as fir.
Management plans prepared for 10 to 20 years are renewed again at 10 to 20-year intervals following a full forest re-inventory. Chief foresters responsible for implementing the plans are, unfortunately, outside the management planning process and subject to short administrational rotation from one district to another. Unless necessary, those foresters can not make any changes to the plans as they do not know how the management objectives were set and the best alternatives were selected.
Since the government both owns and manages 20.7 million hectares of forest, the state forest administration should be spatially organized accordingly across the country. At the top, the forest areas are divided into 27 forest regions where each region is administered and managed by a regional directorate of forestry. Each region is further divided into state forest enterprises (forest industries) all totaling to 241 across the country. The size of forest enterprises ranges from 10,000 ha to 100,000 ha over the country. However, the average size of forest industries is around 83,000 ha. Thus the average size of a forest industry is 3-15 times larger than that of a forest district -planning unit. Each forest industry is again partitioned into forest districts where a forest engineer is appointed to manage. It is at this end that a management plan is required to develop and execute. All together there exists around 1328 management units and at least that many forest management plans A management planning unit is defined as a geographically contiguous areas of forest with certain administrative and political borders, topography, and synchronized technical works. Its size ranges from 1000 ha to 40,000 ha averaging around 16,000 ha in Turkey. Ideally it is stated to be around 5000 ha. The interesting issue here is that each district must have at least a management plan.
Under the administration of Turkish Forest Service, the department of forest management is responsible for the preparation of forest management plans for all the forest areas regardless of ownership. The department maintains approximately 40 forest management teams (FMT); each consists of one chief forest engineer, two foresters usually forest engineer, one technician, one secretary and one car driver. The department also maintains nearly 15 forest management specialists (professional chief forest engineers) responsible for control of timber cruising (forest inventory) and the preparation of forest management plans conducted by the FMT. However, after 1987 some of the timber cruising jobs and preparation of management plans were licensed out for forest consultants outside the forest service department, private forest management teams. This is due mainly to the insufficient personnel capacity of the department over time, unappealing job of timber cruising with equal salary paid for difficult and risky job of timber cruising, fast personal circulation within the department affected by the political wave and the increasing number of planning units waiting for revisions. The department schedules the areas for forest management plans each year to allocate them to FMTs. The forested areas are revisited for every 10 year interval for the survey and the preparation of forest management plans. Specifically, each year approximately 2 million ha of forest areas are surveyed and the management plans are prepared. The important aspect to focus is that when a management plan is to be prepared its corresponding timber survey has to be conducted.
One would think of defining forest management objectives easily due to the single owner of the forest landscape in Turkey. In essence, the objectives of all forest management plans (approximately 1339) over the country are defined and implemented according to the forest management guidelines, which are binding legal documents. Specifically, any forest management plan from its preparation format to the technical details can not override the regulations inside the agreed management guidelines. Thus, the management objectives are stated in the guideless as being the "maximum production of forest products". It is very clear that there is no room for the community or the society to involve in defining forest management objectives. Besides, timber oriented management objective drives the management planning process and the overall management system of the country. While the regional (topographic, ecological, social and economic) differences are not considered in the plans various forest values are also opt out within the plan due to technical inability, unwillingness and orthodox forest management administration system. In contrary, forest ecosystems in Turkey provides numerous forest values other that just timber, such as recreation, wildlife habitat, soil and water protection and biodiversity. These values are not currently part of forest management planning system although researches do suggest the forest service to change the guidelines towards the holistic management of the forest ecosystems.
The local community is not provided with the right information for better and up-to-date awareness of the forestry issues. The role of community within the management of forest resources is unidentified creating a huge intercommunication gap. The people therefore look for a short term gain such as firewood and fodder supply, from the forest resources usually inappropriate for the sustainable management of the resource. Local poverty exacerbates the situation. Furthermore, these people are driven by occasional political gains which cause an unregulated forest landscape (Türker et. al. 2001). While NGOs exist in the country to ameliorate the case they are ineffective. However, starting with the Rio World Summit in 1992 some international forestry processes or initiatives community participation was seriously revisited by the government. As a result forestry town meetings and various workshops were held to inform the society. Given these facts, the management department is now keen to consult the local people and prepare multi purpose forest management plans.
99.9% of the forest land base belongs to the state. In fact, the state both owns and manages the forests across the country. The state forest organization (Turkish Forest Service) under the ministry of forestry is, however, unable to properly manage the forest areas effectively due to a number of land property or ownership related issues. First, since legal forest boundaries have not been completed as of yet (25% uncompleted) for proper ownership and land use titles many forest areas are still under dispute due to social conflict. As a result, lots of cases are filed to the court and not been finalized creating major difficulties towards the management of those areas. Second, landbase is not properly allocated to effective land use categories again creating technical problems and conflicts among land use sectors. For example, 0.3 million ha of forest areas has to be allocated to rangeland or agricultural land uses, whereas 6.1 million ha of agriculture and range lands should be allocated for forest areas according to Turkish Land Use Inventory (Konukçu 2001). Third, traditional land use rights heavily claimed and illegally exercised by the local people create further problems in both preparing management plans and implementing management activities by the forestry sector. Management activities are usually hindered within the areas adjacent to local residential areas or villagers. For example, 3.4 million ha of forest areas (15% of forest area) are reserved for protection within the forest management plans, some of which is allocated for protection due to social conflicts and these areas are in fact called social pressure areas. Last, while the constitution protects the forested areas to remain forests, ironically approximately 2.6 million ha of forest areas have been lost (56% was lost legally in the parliament by legal arrangements) since 1950. Given these complex and problematic legal pattern of the country, preparing and implementing any type of forest management concept -activities and approaches- would become highly difficult. Thus, these drawbacks or pitfalls are to be resolved first before effective forest management planning system is in place.
Forest management of Turkey is carried out with classical area regulation to generate maximum wood flow. The management principles established in 1963 are still in effect posing great concern to the sustainable management of all forest values. Management plans are just documents with standard tables filled or calculated by simple allowable cut formulas. While few new initiatives (forest resource information system and multiple use management pilot projects) exist they are infancy stage. Still, long term forecasting of forest dynamics under management interventions is not exercised failing to create alternative management options to make better decisions using decision support systems.
Many factors can explain the mismanagement of natural forest ecosystems.
Unresolved forest ownership problem
Ongoing social pressure and the illicit use of forest resources
Lack of technical or professional foresters and frequent displacement due to ineffective government policy
No management design and modeling to prepare strategic plan
Classical area regulation without long term insight for sustainability
Overlooked ecological and biological principles of commercial trees
Thinning levels determined based solely on field experience rather than silvicultural necessity of stands.
Inappropriate silvicultural treatments resulting in non-productive forests.
Long lasting economic crises and poverty together have badly affected the management of natural forest ecosystems
Poor, outdated management process in capable of accommodating new emerging issues such as water production, soil protection, recreation, biodiversity, ecosystems health and integrity.
It is apparent that forest inventory, planning, implementation and assessment phases of the forest management process have to be synchronized with management design and modeling phases based on scientific principles. Sustainable management of forest ecosystems is a function of both a comprehensive decision making process and a successful implementation of forest management plans. In fact, accountable forest management is an inseparable integration of both scientific knowledge and administrative capability.
With these conclusions, we would provide the following recommendations towards the improvement of the management planning process at the regional scale.
1. To prevent the continuous illegal use, the socio-economic structure of the forestry-dependent communities should be enhanced to relax the continuous pressure on forests.
2. Land ownership is a major problem of the country. Department of forestry and the local community are in conflict with respect to the rights of land use. As of now, thousands of cases are in the state courts waiting for solution. Ownership issues must be resolved immediately to clarify the real and legal owner of the lands with enhanced information technology and cadastral application. In the mean time, the laws and regulations should not be frequently changed in resolving the land tenure problem to cause the confusion.
3. Timber oriented forest management with short-term rotation has the potential to eliminate the nation's rich native biodiversity. Wider forest management objectives should be formulated with full participation of people to meet the timber and non-timber goals. Dynamic rotation ages and periodic forest utilization areas should therefore be determined according to these multiple objectives.
4. Implementation of forest plans should be monitored and assessed regularly. Advanced information technology such as geographic information systems, database management systems and remote sensing, should be used to automate and enhance the management planning process.
5. Chief foresters responsible for implementing management plans on the ground should not be subjected to frequent lateral changes (i.e., from one region to another due to inexplicable government policies) which causes major problems during the implementation phase.
6. Lastly, forests should no longer be regarded as a fiber sink to utilize. They provide, instead, many other benefits that could not be produced otherwise. Thus, multiple use of forest management should be practiced with respect to the principles of ecosystem management (Baþkent and Jordan 1995; Baskent and Yolasýðmaz 1999; Grumbine 1994).
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| [1] Professor, Faculty of Forestry,
Karadeniz Technical University, 61080 Trabzon, Turkey. Fax: (462) 325-7499;
Email: [email protected] |