FOREST UTILIZATION

Principles of organization of forest exploitation in Belarus are determined by the following normative documents:
 Forest Sector Development Conception till 2015.
 Forestry Sustainable Development Conception till 2015.
 Forestry Development Strategic Plan till 2015.
 National Strategy of Sustainable Socio-Economic Development of Republic of Belarus till 2020.
 Forestry Development Program for 2007-2011.

Above mentioned documents fix the following objectives of forest exploitation management:
 rational, sound, continuous forest utilization;
 ensuring of relatively constant forest exploitation;
 realization of ecologically oriented forest exploitation.

For achieving of these objectives the following tasks are accomplished:
 Forest exploitation management according to forest functions: taking into account stand groups and categories.
 Science-based determination of discount cutting area through accomplishment of basic forest regulation.
 Observance of multi-purpose and complex forest exploitation principles, what means rational use not only of timber but also of food and medical resources.
 Guaranteeing of forest regeneration and further reproduction.
 Observance of ecological principles in organization of multi-purpose forest exploitation: preservation of forest habitat and biodiversity, minimization of ground cover damage.
 Gradual optimization of forest species composition according to modern economic needs, conditions of vegetation, economic and ecological requirements.
 Optimization of assortment structure according to economic needs of republic and world timber market.
 Gradual optimization of cutting ages and intervals as technical instrument for production of the most valuable assortments, achieving the highest economic indexes of forest exploitation.
 Use of forest recreation potential.

In 2006 harvested timber volume in all kinds of felling in the system of the Ministry of Forestry came to 9 240 ths m3, including 6 726 ths m3 of coniferous species, 2 385 ths m3 of soft-leaved species, 124,1 ths m3 of hard-leaved species. Annual increase of forest harvesting operations allowed in 2006 using 85,5% of rated cutting area in final harvest.

The Decree of president and governmental programs foresee bringing existing technical equipment up to standard, introducing modern methods of improvement and final fellings on the basis of progressive technologies, what allows replacing manual labor by machines as much as possible. There is realized annual planned replacement of out-of-date and depreciated technique by modern multiple-functional harvesting machines and equipment.