Study supported by the Forest Development Fund (agreement No. 24-00-S0MF01-000008)
The aim of the Study is to obtain and evaluate current information on private forest management, and related forest property consolidation and cooperation processes in the country.
In 2024, according to State Land service data, private (natural and legal) persons have registered 1.59 million ha of forest, inventoried (i.e. registered in the database of the State Forest Service (SFS)) is 1.61 million ha. According to SFS data, forests belong to 116 thousand private forest owners, incl. 109 thousand for private individuals. The analysis shows that the number of natural persons who own the forest continues to decrease, although at the same time a large number of owners of small (< 5 ha) properties remain (more than 50%). It was established that non-residents own 5,550 ha of forest (according to SFS data). Most of the private forests are in the estates of which the purpose of use of real estate has agriculture. The most economically active are individuals who own more than 10–50 ha of forest, as well as legal entities who own more than 1,000 ha of forest. Natural persons mainly rely on natural regeneration (86% of the area) for forest regeneration. In 11% of the areas registered in the state forest register, the forest inventory is older than 20 years. Currently, only two forest cooperatives are actively operating in Latvia. In order to obtain a representative opinion of forest owners, a sociological survey was conducted.