Private forest


A private forest is a forest that is not owned by municipal authorities, church authorities or the state. It can refer to woodland owned by a natural or juridical person or a partnership.It is the forest which is planted, nurtured or conserved in any private land.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, private forests are defined as forests owned by individuals, families, communities, private co-operatives, corporations and other business entities, religious and private educational institutions, pension or investment funds, NGOs, nature conservation associations and other private institutions.
Currently, 22 percent are privately owned.
Globally, the share of publicly owned forests has decreased since 1990 and the area of forest under private ownership has increased.

Categories

In forestry terms, private forest may be divided into various sub-categories. For example, in Germany private forest is categorised by size as follows:
  • Smallest private forest : below 5 hectares
  • Small private forest : 5 - 200 hectares
  • Medium private forest : 200 - 1,000 hectares
  • Large private forest : over 1,000 hectares which only represents about 6 percent of the forest area of the old federal states. In the former East Germany the Evangelical churches, by contrast, still own over 30,000 hectares of private forest and an important private forestry authority with its own uniform and badges.

    Emergence

Private forests arise for a variety of reasons. In Europe:
  • Large private forest estates arose predominantly because mediatised territorial lordships, although stripped of their sovereignty, were allowed to keep almost all of their forest estates.
  • : For example, the forest estate of the House of Thurn and Taxis, the largest forest in Germany owned by a private person with 28,000 hectares. In Austria, the almost equally large Mayr-Melnhof estate but success of a middle-class merchant dynasty. The Habsburg estates were forcibly acquired and turned into federal forests.
  • Middle private forests arose either as a result of the division of large private forests, but primarily through the sale of forests
  • : Examples here are the nine federal states of Germany: in 1945-49 in the wake of the land reforms in East Germany, large landowners were stripped of their estates in the Soviet Zone of Occupation and the land was given to refugees and former farmers in a move known as Junkerland in Bauernhand. After the fall of the Berlin Wall it was decided, not the give the private forests in East Germany back to their original owners, but with the help of a trust company to transfer them to new private owners. This resulted in plots of private land between 200 and 1,000 hectares in area.
  • Small private forests are mostly areas of farm woodland. In the 19th century the hitherto common land was divided up and given to the entitled farmers. In order to ensure a sensible division of the woodland the farmers were not usually given one plot, but several plots of varying soil quality and tillering. In regions where gavelkind applied, the sometimes very small plots were further divided, which led to a fragmentation of the forests and makes management today impossible in places.

    Distribution

Of the regions, Oceania, North and Central America and South America have the highest proportions of private forests.

Europe

European Union

In the European Union 42% of the area is covered by forest. 60% of the European forest area is private. The share of private forest area is ranging from 13% in Bulgaria up to 98% in Portugal. Almost all European private forest is small holdings, only 1% of European private forest holdings have units over 50 ha.

Austria

Forest cover approximately 40.000 km² which represent 48% of Austria. 82% of the forest area is in private ownership. Most private forest owner held small forest.
Traditionally, private forest owner in Austria were predominantly farmers and forest were used to cover the personal needs of wood products and occasionally to finance larger investments. Due to societal change and the associated urbanization a new group of “remote urban forest owners” have emerged. These are owners of small-scale forest, who predominately have inherited but do not manage or actively cultivate their forest. Meanwhile one third of private forest owners belong to this new group.

Catalonia (North-East Spain)

Around two thirds of total area of Catalonia is covered by forests and 75% of this surface are private forests. Forests ownership is scattered and with a large proportion of small properties. The mean surface of the forest estates of Catalonia is 6.7 ha. Moreover, the 52 % of the forest estates do not exceed 1 ha, even they represent just the 2.8% of the private forest area. Just 4.75 % of the properties have more than 25 ha, although they represent the 67.25% of the global private forests and only 1.2 % of private properties are bigger than 100 ha.
Some forest states are also linked to agriculture activities, apart from forest activities. Ownership, traditionally, has been passed from parents to their children. Family heritage is estimated to account for 60% of the transmissions.
There is no any concrete definition of small scale forest owners, the definition depends on many aspects. However, in Catalonia, law defines as minimum forest unit, 25 ha

Germany

Germany has around 11.4 million hectares of woodland of which 48.0 percent is in private ownership. The state of North Rhine-Westphalia has the greatest proportion of private forest ; Hesse has the lowest proportion. In Germany there are just under 2 million private forest owners. The average size of German private woods is 3 hectares. Only 13% of private woods are over 1,000 hectares in area; 50% of the area is made of up small private forests of up to 20 hectares in area and they account for 98% of the owners. The DBU Naturerbe, with around 60,000 ha, is the largest private forest owner in Germany. Of the churches in Germany, around 150,000 ha of forest is divided between 6,500 legal owners. Even though the churches are mostly corporate bodies, the woodlands they own are considered to be private forests.
Federal statePrivate forests up to 20 haPrivate forests over 20 to 50 haPrivate forests over 50 to 100 haPrivate forests over 100 to 200 haPrivate forests over 200 to 500 haPrivate forests over 500 to 1,000 haPrivate forests over 1,000 haPrivate forests total
Baden-Württemberg242,232 ha50,628 ha28,516 ha19,210 ha20,611 ha17,510 ha114,162 ha492,869 ha
Bavaria950,045 ha159,527 ha69,758 ha49,359 ha61,725 ha49,726 ha110,839 ha1,450,979 ha
Brandenburg + Berlin254,678 ha75,021 ha35,536 ha31,193 ha69,493 ha70,678 ha102,661 ha668,479 ha
Hamburg + Bremen6,725 ha-791 ha----7,516 ha
Hesse67,983 ha5,999 ha9,998 ha18,395 ha26,793 ha19,595 ha69,983 ha218,746 ha
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern64,575 ha16,591 ha17,286 ha28,115 ha32,188 ha19,968 ha15,200 ha220,646 ha
Lower Saxony314,954 ha98,615 ha74,322 ha66,339 ha67,928 ha29,790 ha54,875 ha706,823 ha
North Rhine-Westphalia239,010 ha59,255 ha48,916 ha37,780 ha62,437 ha37,383 ha122,885 ha607,666 ha
Rhineland-Palatinate154,401 ha5,475 ha6,968 ha11,349 ha17,322 ha11,448 ha17.322 ha224,284 ha
Saarland20,370 ha783 ha1,175 ha783 ha5,484 ha783 ha-29,380 ha
Saxony127,371 ha11,362 ha10,166 ha9,966 ha25,913 ha16,544 ha29,102 ha240,790 ha
Saxony-Anhalt121,064 ha27,102 ha12,555 ha16,740 ha29,394 ha32,782 ha25,608 ha289,257 ha
Schleswig-Holstein39,788 ha4,687 ha4,986 ha6,881 ha8,775 ha9,972 ha13,961 ha89,050 ha
Thuringia130,193 ha13,984 ha12,555 ha12,799 ha14,534 ha12,607 ha27,534 ha239,193 ha
Germany total2,733.389 ha529,029 ha333,526 ha308,910 ha442,597 ha328,787 ha704,132 ha5,485,679 ha

In Liechtenstein around 43% or 6,865 hectares of the country is wooded. Of that, 8% is in private hands.

Slovakia

In Slovakia over 45.1% of total area is covered by forests. In 2017, the state owned 769 thousand ha of forest land, or 39.5% of its total area. The state forest enterprises managed 1.01 million ha of forest land, or 52.4% of its total area. The remaining area of forest land was managed by non-state forest enterprises which own and manage private, municipal, community and church forests as well as forests of agricultural cooperatives. In private ownership is 214 thousand ha of forests. According to Forestry code the owner of a forest plot or several fragmented forest plots whose aggregate area within forest unit does not exceed 50 hectares is defined as a small forest owner.