FORESTS IN HUNGARY,    FORESTS IN EUROPE

The forest land area of Hungary has been gradually increasing in the last 80 years. This is due to the accomplished large-scale afforestation and tree planting carried out under the direction of professional foresters. As a result, the forest land area which in 1921 was hardly larger than 1 million hectare has exceeded 1.9 million hectare by today.
The last three decades brought extraordinary historic changes in Hungary, from the change of political system to the accession to the European Union. During the process proprietorship has fundamentally been transformed, forest management structure has been modified; management related goals and conditions have been changed as well, similarly to the legal and institutional background.

In Hungary the share of state-owned forests is 57 %, community-owned is 1 % and 42 % of forests are private. A long-term purpose, primarily based on afforestation, is the large-scale increase of private and community owned areas. The highlighted objective of forestry policy is the structural improvement of the over-divided estate system that hinders private forest management, and the establishment of viable management organisations and partnerships.
The management of state-owned forests is primarily performed by 22 state forest management corporations. However, other national institutions – like water resource directorates, national parks – are also managing state-owned forest land areas.
The share of community ownership is relatively small, mostly managed by municipalities of villages and cities.
The majority of private forests are undivided joint properties. Regarding management the most common form is natural persons – having assignment contract –, but the share of corporations and co-operatives is also considerable. A special forest management type is the institution of the integrator that handles forest land areas in one’s own right and performs professional directing activities in areas belonging to other forest managers or contracts with them to perform particular forest management tasks.
To ensure the interests of society and nature in the management forest can be managed only in accordance with the so-called district forest management plans. The district forest management plans are prepared and their compliances are verified by the forestry authority in both the public and private forests.