Posted on December, 11 2014

More than 100 representatives of the Ukrainian State Forest Agency, of national parks, students and other environmental institutions in the Volyn and Lviv regions of Ukraine took part in trainings on the importance of old growth forests, recreation planning and community partnerships.
 
The trainings were part of cooperation between WWF Ukraine (supported by DEG Project), the U.S. Forest Service, the NGO “FORZA” and the State Forest Resource Agency of Ukraine.
 
Earlier this year, the US Forest Service had held other trainings on forest management and developing local communities in the Ukrainian Carpathians. Their positive impact convinced the US administrators to expand their cooperation with foresters to other parts of Ukraine in order to help support sustainability in more forests enterprises.
 
The focus of the seminars was conservation, strengthening the practice of multifunctional forest management and cooperating with stakeholders. Part of the programme involved developing management plans for the different organizations that the participants represented, with the overall goal of helping them solve existing forestry problems. 
 
Roman Volosyanchuk, WWF Ukraine forestry expert, underlined the importance of preserving pristine forests and identifying high conservation value forests. Ukraine has lost nearly half of them only within the last 10 years.  
 
Sheila Slemp, US Forest Service programme specialist for Ukraine and Europe, outlined the practice of multifunctional forest use in the United States, which helps bring additional income from sources other than logging.

Other participants mentioned the importance of looking for the best niche for individual organizations when planning recreation, as well as having regular meetings with local communities and all other stakeholders.