Gegenwartsprobleme der sowjetischen Forst- und Holzwirtschaft

Figures on forest stocks show that the USSR has about a third of the world's timber stocks and well over half of the coniferous ones. More than half of the state's territory, over 1.2 billion hectares, is forest land, although not all of it is actually stocked forest land. On these areas, 2.5-3 million hectares of logs are felled annually, resulting in a production of more than 300 million m3. In the past thirty years, most of the timber has shifted to northern Russia and Siberia because the aim was to reduce the overexploitation of stocks in the sparsely forested parts of the country. This allowed forests to regenerate in populated areas, but also meant that logging in more remote areas had to be done under harsher conditions. This, in turn, had a negative impact on the timber industry's ability to attract and retain workers, as well as the ever-increasing cost of transporting timber from the point of production to the end user.