World Forestry: Hungarien Forest

1 giu 2008

Hungarien Forest

11:24 | Postado por Marcos Giongo |

Let us introduce the system of the Hungarien Forest Management, and the structure and activities of the Central Agricultural Office Forestry Directorate:

Construction of forestry administration

About 25% of the arable soil of the country is utilized by forest management. The national economic importance of the sector is inevitable as forests are there in our natural and constructed environment as well.
Even though the sectors receive considerably little from the GDP, the size of the area, the large number of owners, managers and employees, the variety of natural relations and the multiple, constantly renewed expectations of society with regards to forests require a professionally founded administrational system.
The current structure of forestry administration has been developed by social and economic changes following the political changes and by the legal background established parallel to this process.

The forest management sector is submitted to the jurisdiction of the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development. The regulatory and directing tasks are performed by a separate unit within the Ministry, the Department of Natural Resources.
Primary and secundary magisterial management, organisation and administrative tasks are performed by the Forestry Directorate of the Central Agricultural Office. (An exception is the supervision of propagation material production and distribution, which is performed by the Directorate of Plant Growing and Horticulture.)
Regarding the question of management there are state-owned and private forests.

The proprietary rights of state-owned areas by the assignment of the Minister of Finances are practiced by the Treasury Property Directorate and - in the case of other areas by the National Land Fund Management Organization. The supervisors of these proprietors are the Minister of Finances and the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development.
The Directorate and the Organization, as proprietors, assign state-owned forest land areas into the custody of the 100% state-owned, mostly forestry corporations.
Other areas are managed by forest managers registered by the forestry authority. Forest managers are private entities or legal persons exercising proprietary rights or the right of use for the area.

Structure of ownership
In Hungary the share of state-owned forests is 57% and that of community-owned is 1% and 42% of forests are private. A long-term purpose, primarily based on afforestation, is the large-scale increase of private and community owned areas. The highlighted objective of forestry policy is the structure improvement of the over-divided estate system that hinders private forest management, and the establishment of viable management organisations and partnerships.

Central Agricultural Office, purposeful and controlled forest management
The Central Agricultural Office is a central budgetary organization working under the direct control of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. The organisation comprises nineteen regional offices (on level of county) and a headquarters.
The Forestry Directorate is one of the 12 directorates of the Central Agricultural Office that comprises 10 regional directorates, as part of the county offices. The major purpose of the Forestry Diractorate is the facilitation of purposeful and controlled forest management.

The main tasks are the following:
Forest inventory on the whole forested area of the country regardless of proprietary relations-, 10-year-recovery middle-term management plans, so called district forest plans
Basic and thematic mapping
Management and updating of the National Forest Stand Database
Collection of data and data processing for statistics
Coordination of forest health monitoring
Performance of primary forestry authority tasks
Participation in the application proce-dures related to national and European forestry support and operation of the forest maintenance charge system.

These tasks are performed by the Forestry Diractorate within the relating legal frames, regardless of the proprietorship of forests or the sector itself. However, as opposed to similar organisations of other European countries, the Forestry Diractorate does not perform silvicultural activities.

Forest management system, tendency
The management of state-owned forests is primarily performed by the Ministry of Defence and the 22 forest management corporation under the supervision of the Hungarian Privatization and State Holding Company. However, other national institutions like water resource directorates, national parks are also managing state-owned forest land areas.
The share of community ownership is relatively small, mostly managed by municipalities of villages and cities.

The majority of private forests are undivided joint properties. Regarding management primarily natural persons - employed by assignment contract - are to be mentioned, but the share of corporations and cooperatives is also considerable. A special forest management type is the institution of the integrator that handles forest land areas in one's own right and performs professional directing activities in areas belonging to other forest managers or contracts with them to perform particular forest management tasks.
Due to their size unmanaged, "unclaimed" forest land areas must also be mentioned. These areas do not have a responsible forest manager registered at the forestry authority. It is a highlighted purpose of forest administration to decrease their scale by magisterial and supporting means, and to help the establishment and operation of long-term management structures.

Legal background
The legal background of forest management in Hungary is the. Act No. LIV of 1996 on Forests and the Protection of Forests, the decree of 29/1997 (IV. 30.) issued by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development on the execution of the previous and the Ministry decree of 88/2000 (XI.10.) on the Forest Management Planning and Supervision Code.
The other law regulating magisterial and administrational tasks is the Act No. IV of 1957 on state administration procedures. Forestry Directorate observes every other relative law, especially the Act No LIII. of 1996 on Nature Conservation and the Act No. LV. on the Protection of Game, Game Management and Hunting.