A comparison in attitudes and activity among different groups of private forest owners in Noarootsi municipality, Estonia

Sammanfattning: Noarootsi municipality is situated in north western Estonia and has like the rest of the countryhad a rather turbulent history of forest ownership. The forest has been mainly privately ownedat times and fully state owned during the Soviet Union area. Since the fall of the Soviet UnionEstonia has gone through a privatization process in which former land owners could retrievetheir farms. Many of the land owners in Noarootsi municipality had fled to Sweden duringWorld War II and did not move back although many did retrieve their properties. The purposeof this study was to research what differences there were between the forest owners living inEstonia and those living in Sweden’s attitudes and behavior regarding forest management andwhat influenced these. More knowledge about this may give the Estonian forestry sector agreater ability to fulfill the forest owners’ objectives and improve the activity on theirproperties.Data for the study was collected through a questionnaire that was sent to 145 of Noarootsimunicipality’s private forest owners, whereof 70 lived in Estonia and 75 lived in Sweden. Intotal 60 percent of the forms were returned, of the Estonians 59 percent returned thequestionnaire while 61 percent of the Swedes returned it.Forest owners living in Sweden were significantly older than those living in Estonia and alsofemale forest owners were significantly older than male forest owners, however it was onlyamong Estonians that the difference between females and males was significant. Naturally,only Estonians lived permanently on their properties but a greater share of the Estonian menthan women lived permanently on their property. Of the survey’s all respondents, a greaterproportion were men than women.Estonian forest owners’ ownership objectives were in general more connected to aneconomically significant use of the forest than the Swedish forest owners’ ownershipobjectives were. Swedes in general thought family ties were of greatest importance andsecondly opportunity of recreation. The Estonians in general instead rated access to timber orfirewood of greater importance. Family ties were important among Estonians too, but notmuch more than the access to residence. Estonians had in general rated most motives ofacquiring of greater importance than Swedes. Pursuing forestry was rated approximately ashigh by both groups, but the importance of pursuing nature conservation was rated higherthan forestry by Estonians and lower than forestry by Swedes. Men in general rated allmotives of greater importance than women did.Few respondents estimated their initial knowledge to be more than low. Of those who did,more were Estonian and more had acquired their properties through other ways than the landrestitution process. Also, those with more initial knowledge seemed to be using or intend touse their forests for more income related reasons than other forest owners did. Women ingeneral estimated their initial knowledge to be lower than men did. Most respondents gainedknowledge since they became forest owners but there was a big variation for what knowledgesources they thought most important. Magazines and books were important for the Estoniansbut not so for the Swedes and this may be due to these sources in part are in Estonian anddifficult for Swedes to assimilate. More important for the Swedes and on-property residentswere family or friends, which may imply a wider spread forestry tradition among Swedes andthose living by their forests. Information evenings and in particular forest days were importantsources for cooperative members. Probably the members have better accessibility to thesesources through the cooperative.4Close to sixty percent of the respondents carried out some sort of forestry measure on theirown but differences between the groups were great. Estonians were much more active thanSwedes, which is natural, considering the Estonians living so much closer to their propertiesand men were more active than women. Furthermore, more of the Estonians and men hiredexternal help for forestry measures than Swedes or women did. But the Swedes in generalhired help for a greater number of measures than Estonians did, which was much a result of avery great amount of cooperative members showing they hired help for a large number ofmeasures. More than eighty percent felt a need to hire help in the future. There were no greatdifferences between the groups, except for cooperative members feeling a need of help for agreater number of measures than non-members did.Most of the respondents thought active use of the forest was important. Estonians and womenin general thought it was more important than Swedes and men did. A greater amount of thecooperative members than the non-members thought active use was important and for thesealso the cooperative was considered the most important contact that influenced their forestmanagement. Non-member Swedes instead rated family or friends of greatest importance,while Estonians thought the municipality had greatest influence on their forest management.A cooperative membership seem to play an important role for the activity level in the forest.Although members did not carry out the greatest amount of forestry measures on their own,they were the owners of which the greatest amount hired help, and that hired help for thelargest number of measures. They also felt the greatest importance of active use and largestneed of hiring future help.