Logging in Austria

Sawlogs in a forest
Photo: BML / Johannes Prem

It is key for each line of industry to know its production data. Therefore, it is of the utmost importance to determine the volume of timber harvested in Austria’s forests. Their annual surveying constitutes a key task of Directorate III/1 of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, Regions and Water Management.

Value-added chain Forest and Wood

Forestry and the timber industry are important economic factors in Austria. 172,000 companies and enterprises along the value-added chain Forest - Wood - Paper provide jobs for around 300,000 persons in Austria. In 2018 the output of Austria’s forestry and timber industry amounted to about  2.4 billion.

Laid down in the Forestry Act

The periodical surveying of the volume felled is laid down in the Austrian Forestry Act. Due to the importance of the data, forest owners are obliged to provide information on their timber harvesting volume.

There are approximately 145,000 forest owners in Austria. As surveying all of them would go beyond any scope, surveying is carried out using different methods – depending on the size of holdings:

  • All holdings having a forest area of more than 200 hectares are fully surveyed in all of Austria. This means that all of the approx. 1,600 “major forest enterprises” are included in the survey.
  • The remaining holdings (with a forest area < 200 hectares) are subject to a random sample, which means that an additional appr. 5,400 “small” (private) forest enterprises are included in the survey annually. There are exceptions for the Federal Provinces of Tyrol and Vorarlberg, which survey these holdings to the full extent as well, and for the Federal Provinces of Burgenland and Vienna which estimate the timber logged by these holdings.
  • Österreichische Bundesforste AG reports the volume of timber felled directly to the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, Regions and Water Management.

Collection of data

This means that every year about 7,000 forest owners are surveyed in the framework of indirect federal administration by the Federal Provinces or by the district administration authorities. The due date for reporting the data is March 1 of the year following the year of survey. After that, the data from the random sample are extrapolated and the data provided by holdings with more than 200 hectares are added up. After the data has been checked for plausibility, the figures are anonymised and published by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, Regions and Water Management.

On top of their actual function, i.e. providing a production figure for an entire industry, the data also serve a number of other important purposes. For example, the volume felled is used to calculate the gross value-added generated in forestry and is thus made a part of Austria’s Gross Domestic Product.

In addition, the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, Regions and Water Management has to fulfil a large number of national and international reporting obligations for which the data provided by the Timber Felling Report (“Holzeinschlagsmeldung”) are indispensable.