Strategies for storm damage management

Central institutions restrict themselves to setting goals and priorities and to offer services and support for the local authorities (forest offices and districts) in superordinate areas (long-distance sales, timber hauling, technique of wet storage, acquisition of workforce).

strengths:

• Takes into account regional conditions withing a state (structure of forest ownership; tree species composition; amount of damaged timber after "Lothar") and regional "on-site-strategies" in coping with the storm damage.
• Thus problems can be better solved on-site taking into account local experiences.
• Measures, limiting the freedom of action of the single district-forester or head of forest office are often not practicable and usually do not reach a consensus.

weaknesses:

• Differing ideas and a lack of arrangements concerning the degree of support between the forest offices and the higher authorities
• A lack of control by the head of the administration of the adherence to rules and goals.
• Underestimation of the mental burden of the collaborators when dealing with the storm damage by the head of the administration

Experiences and evaluation:

The strategy of decentralised steering – based on the organisation of the ongoing management activities – has proven to be successful from the point of view of the head of the administration as well as of the collaborators. However, the employees see the necessity to regulate the responsibilities and the support by the central authorities in more clear way and to establish an increased guiding of the collaborators as well as control-mechanisms.

Rules:

• No crossings on the total area of storm damaged stands to harvest timber, deskew damaged trees or clear areas – also in difficult situations.
• It was prohibited to fall below a distance between strip roads of 20m (flats) or 30m (slopes). Existing strip roads had to be used.

Strengths:

• In most cases careful harvesting was respected as important goal.
  

Weaknesses:

• Rules for careful harvesting have not always been respected. In the conflict between "work safety – careful harvesting – economic efficiency", careful harvesting has not always looked upon as important.
• To find existing strip roads and to implement the rules for contractors was not always possible.

Experiences and evaluation:

Careful harvesting – in normal forest operations self-evident – was, when harvesting storm-damaged timber, often neglected for many reasons. The hierarchy of the goals when coping with future storm events has to be more precisely formulated by the forest service and respecting the implemented rules has to be forced.

Strenghts:

• The strategy has been accepted and implemented by the employees of the state forest service. In the year 2000 74% of the harvested timber in private forests has been sold, whilst only 40% of the harvested timber in the state forest and 65% in community forests have been sold.

Experiences and evaluation:

The strategy has been successful due to the agreement and the engagement of the collaborators.

Evaluation:

The utilisation of the own labour capacity was achieved, the framework conditions for the implementation can be improved. The economic results in the year of the storm were not satisfying due to the circumstances for managing the storm damage. When interpreting the operational results, the activities of the state forest in favour of other forest owners and the general public have to be taken into account.

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Back to the article overview in the: Storm Topic Collection – Coping with Storm Damaged Timber