Reformă, contrareformă și fără-fond formă

The paper debriefs the current debates on the forest management and forest policy where environmental NGOs and logging companies are fighting: one the one hand, NGOs intervene in many technical issues related to the forest management planning and applied forestry where their expertise is patchy and, on the other hand, the logging companies accuse the nature protection measures, some of them adopted in due time, like the ones related to Natura 2000 network, where the management plans have been approved and endorsed. Since the stakes are very high the unprofessional messages delivered by many NGOs do not receive technically correct replies from the forest managers either because they are not able to communicate in simple words or simply because they are afraid of being labeled timber thieves: this defenseless attitude is not appropriate at all because the media is still talking about illegal clearfellings in spite of the very tough preventive measures undertaken by the Forest guards. Most of the allegations of illegal cuttings rest on the volume estimated by the NFI (the difference between the total yield and the allowable cut) while the same NFI allegedly gives high hopes for even higher allowable cut due to the first estimation of the total growth. The fake news here is that the total growth refers to the whole forest area, while the allowable cut refers to commercial forests only: there is no hint in the total growth unless the aggregated figure is not split into the two types of forests: commercial and not commercial (i.e. strictly protected forest areas). The core message delivered by the article is addressed to the management planning system, in charge with setting up the allowable cut and the cutting budgets. Some differences between the private forests and the public forests shall be made sensible in terms of maturity ages when stands of trees are to be harvested. However, it is also explained that reducing the forest rotation with 20 or even 40 years will not skyrocket the allowable cut because the reference level of the normal age class goes up and the overplus of harvestable wood will be used to compensate larger deficits brought about by the un-even actual age structure and the higher normal age class. The coppice with standards is also supported as a technical solution for harvesting more fuel wood for rural population.