Reality of municipal forest management plan for an example of Furudonomachi, Fukushima Prefecture

Abstract

On the basis of "The figure of reform towards regeneration of a forest and forestry" officially announced in 2011, the government started a drastic reform of a forestry planning system, and is also advancing necessary reconsideration about the municipal forest service plan. Because various problems are pointed out to the present plan until now, a new plan will be laid to reconsider the present plan after inspection and evaluation of its regional situation. In this study, we made an attempt to reveal the working conditions of the present plan and to adjust current conditions to make the present plan a more effective one in the case of Furudonomachi, Fukushima Prefecture. As the results, it was revealed that the present plan does not gain the sufficient policy effects, although the present plan was utilized as a standard for the felling of living trees and bamboos: neither thinning nor a strip road building is performed as planned in the present study. The lack of sufficient policy effects in the present plan may be attributed to the findings as follows; since many works of forest are dependent on a governmental subsidy, it is hard to reflect the will of a town to the working conditions; sufficient execution system is not arranged for the present plan; as the present plan is not formed in response to the wishes of the local public, the plan is not thoroughly positioned as a master plan. Although the Forest Act is partly revised, it may be concluded that unification of a plan and various subsidies, reinforcement of execution system, and positive participation of local residues in the execution of the plan are essential to improve the efficacy of the plan.