Forest owners in Sweden reported 262,532 hectares for final felling in 2019. This was a decrease of 10% compared to 2018. In addition, they applied for permits for felling on 3,022 hectares of mountainous forest and on 1,461 hectares of valuable broad-leaved forest, as Swedish Forest Agency reported.
The reduction in the area reported for felling is partly due to large areas of forests being damaged by fire in 2018. Southern Norrland was the region most affected with a lot of notifications immediately after the fires, which is probably the reason why notifications decreased by as much as 22% in 2019.
In Northern Norrland and Götaland, the reported area decreased by 10% and 14%, respectively. In Svealand, on the other hand, the reported area increased by 10%.
Infestation of bark beetle and storm felling affected notifications in 2019. The differences compared to 2018 were particularly noticeable at the beginning of the year. The storm Jan brought increased notifications in Västerbotten County, as did the storm Alfrida in the counties of Stockholm, Uppsala, Södermanland and Västmanland.
In total for the full year 2019, notifications decreased in 16 out of 21 counties. The five counties where notifications increased are all in Svealand. Never have there been such large areas notified as in 2019 in the counties of Södermanland and Uppsala.
The number of applications in 2019 was 64,686, which was 4% lower than in 2018.
In 2019, the Swedish Forest Agency received applications for permits for final felling in mountainous forests on 3,022 hectares of productive forest land. This is a decrease of 11% compared to 2018.
In 2019, the area of the application for permits for final felling of valuable-broad-leaved-forest increased by 22% to 1,461 hectares.
In 2019, forest owners reported and applied for the felling of 6,632 hectares of productive forest land for purposes other than timber production. The majority of this area, 6,199 hectares, was in so-called normal forest, 292 hectares in mountainous forests and 142 hectares in valuable-broad-leaved-forest. Compared with last year, the reported area within ordinary forest decreased by 10%. In mountainous forests, it increased by 25% and in hardwood forest it increased by 69%.
