Management of EU forests under attack

g 04/06/1998

By Simon Coss

EU GOVERNMENTS are coming under fire from 'green' campaigners for failing to implement measures to protect the Union's forests.

Experts from the World-Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) claim Union ministers failed to take the necessary steps to safeguard the wide variety of plant and animal species living in native woodlands when they met in Lisbon earlier this week to discuss the issue of forest protection.

“The indifference of most European forest ministries towards nature is staggering,” said Dr Claude Martin, director-general of WWF International. “It is clear that forests are still mainly seen as 'factories' for wood.”

The WWF wanted the Lisbon meeting to adopt a resolution on 'biodiversity' - ensuring the protection of as many plant and animal species as possible - but the subject did not even get on to the talks' agenda.

Instead, ministers opted to launch a public information campaign on the importance of forests as “multifunctional eco- systems”.

The environmental organisation recently released a set of 'scorecards' on forestry conditions in all 15 member states. It said the main problems facing forests were inappropriate management, air pollution, fires, erosion and the destruction of forest habitats.

Only 2&percent; of the Union's forest cover is now natural woodland. The rest is artificially planted, with much of it intensively 'farmed'. This causes problems for species such as owls and woodpeckers, which need old or dead trees to nest in. Such wood is generally removed in modern forests.

Meanwhile, European Commission experts have admitted that proposals to introduce a Union-wide system of labels for timber grown in sustainably managed forests are going nowhere.

The institution must put forward its views on the usefulness of an eco-labelling scheme for wood by the end of this year as part of a wider EU forest strategy. But officials admit that no progress has been made on the labelling issue so far.

The main problem the Commission faces is the fact that there are widely differing views on the desirability of eco-labels for wood.

While retailers who sell timber products are lobbying hard for some sort of commonly agreed EU approach to labelling, most forest owners are opposed to the idea.

Roughly 65&percent; of the Union's entire forest cover is in private hands, with much of it owned by relatively small-scale operators. The industry argues that if a harmonised label system was introduced, these smaller producers could face problems.

“We want the Commission to avoid anything which would cause any distortion of the wood market,” said Frank Flasche, secretary-general of the Confederation of European Forest Owners.