Abstract
Although the roles and jurisdictional tasks of municipal forest administration have increased with the implementation of the Private Forest Management Entrustment System in Japan, it has also identified the inadequacies of the staffing and system. In this study, we examined the status of outsourcing within this system based on the results of questionnaire surveys of 1,612 municipalities and 47 prefectures in Japan. The results revealed that the outsourcing rate of Private Forest Management Entrustment System-related tasks were higher than those of forest law-related tasks, however, approximately 70% of the municipalities were still conducting these tasks independently. Moreover, forest owners’cooperatives were primarily tasked with outsourcing partners, while consulting companies were the most common for data acquisition and analysis. Furthermore, the existence of organizations supporting municipalities affected outsourcing promotion. Specifically, municipalities with more outsourced operations had a higher implementation rate of each Private Forest Management Entrustment System-related task, indicating rapid and sophisticated progress. However, the results also revealed that not all tasks could be outsourced; furthermore, outsourcing is difficult for municipalities with limited human resources, and support is needed for specifications and calculating the basis for cost estimations.
