Small-scale forestry in Sweden

The purpose of the thesis was to improve the tools for decision making for small-scale forest owners in Sweden. Understanding the objectives of forest owners is crucial for the success of policy initiatives and for promoting successful sustainable forest management. The aims of this thesis were to: a) depict the green forest management plan from a nature conservation point of view; b) identify objectives of owners’; c) analyse different types of owners; and d) evaluate the suitability of silvicultural practices for fulfilling multiple objectives. The link between the policies at different levels – the inventory instruction – the counselling – the management plan and the forest owners was studied. Discriminant analysis was used to study the professional foresters’ choice of areas set aside for nature conservation. A theoretical model for empirical studies of objectives was constructed. Explorative qualitative interviews with foresters and forest owners were conducted, followed by a quantitative study using cluster analysis to identify different types of forest owners. A literature review was undertaken to study silvicultural practices, followed by an analysis of the relationships with the objectives. In addition, a method for evaluating results of research within the field was presented. The results showed that the contact between professional foresters and the forest owner is a weak point during the production of the plan. Economic consideration was not the major consideration for the planners in the selection of nature conservation compartments in the Green forest management plan. The objectives and motivations of small-scale forest owners of today covered a broad field from nature conservation to tax planning. The four motivations depicted during the interviews were ‘conservation’, ‘utilities’, ‘amenities’ and ‘economic efficiency’. The following sub-groups of forest owners were differentiated from the quantitative data: ‘the economist’, ‘the conservationist’, ‘the traditionalist’, ‘the optimist’ and finally ‘the pessimist’. The results also indicated that thinning, different forms of natural regeneration and cleaning are useful practices, whereas ‘passive practices’ seem to be unsuitable for multipurpose objectives. Although the results show that forest owners can be differentiated by their objectives, more importantly the results show that precise individual silvicultural programmes can be created for each owner