For beginner forest owner

According to § 3 of the Forest Act § 3, forest is defined as follows:

1) Forest is an ecosystem consisting of forest land and the flora and fauna thereof.
2) For the purposes of this Act, forest land is land which meets at least one of the following requirements:
– is entered in the cadastral register as a forest land parcel;
– is a plot of land with an area of at least 0.1 hectares and woody plants with the height of at least 1.3 metres and with the canopy density of at least 30 per cent grow there.
3) The land of yards, residential land, parks, cemeteries, green areas, berry gardens, orchards, forest nurseries, gardening centres, arboreta, and plantations of trees and shrubs shall not be deemed forest land.
4) For the purposes of this Act, tree and shrub plantation is a site of habitat established for intensive growing of trees and shrubs on non-forest land where trees and shrubs are grown with regular planting spacing and managed uniformly by age.

Thus, if your forest complies with the above mentioned features, you are considered as a forest owner according to the Estonian Forest Act.

What can you do with this knowledge?

It is quite difficult to understand the details of different regulations and legal acts, thus we recommend to contact your local forest owner association to assist you with forestry issues

The advisory service is co-financed by the Private Forest Centre and all forest owners are eligible to use the support. A member of forest owner association will get 15 hours of advice for free. If forest owner is not a member of any forest cooperative, 30% co-payment applies. Private Forest Centre finances advisory service not more than 26 euros per hour and in total 15 hours per year. Certain eligibility rules apply on supporting the use of advisory service, your consultant will explain you all about it. Consultants work within the area of forest owners associations.

Another option would be to start on your own and order a forest management plan from a competent company. There is a list of certified companies that have got the right to compile a forest management plan.