Abstract
The 2005 Agriculture and Forestry Census saw the introduction of a new survey template common to both agriculture and forestry. This template omitted the classification of forest-management entities that had been used up until the 2000 census; as a result, analysis of the forest-management practices of property wards became impossible. In 2005, a new category of forest-management entity, "local governments and property wards", was introduced. In this study, we isolated property-ward microdata from the "local governments and property wards" category of the 2005, 2010, and 2015 censuses to assess the forest-management practices of the property wards alone. In total, 846 property wards met the criteria of "forest-management entity" in 2005, 714 in 2010, and 357 in 2015. This decreasing trend was common across regions, but its magnitude was smaller in the Kanto and Tōsan (Yamanashi, Nagano, and Gifu prefectures) regions. Among forest-management entities with forest holdings of < 50 ha, the numbers of property wards remained nearly unchanged. Overall, we found that 175 property wards conducted planting activities in 2005, 140 in 2010, and 111 in 2015, representing around 20% of the property wards that met the definition of being a forest-management entity in the respective survey years. We further found that the numbers of property wards conducting non-commercial thinning decreased from 416 in 2010 to 275 in 2015, while commercial thinning increased from 166 wards in 2010 to 209 in 2015. Finally, we found that while 72 property wards conducted cutting in 2005, only 55 did so in 2010 and 54 in 2015; there was almost no change between 2010 and 2015.
https://ror.org/02kpeqv85 
