DELFI has an article today from LETA on logging in Latvia.
The article is in Latvian.

http://www.delfi.lv/news/national/business/planotais-koku-cirsanas-apjoms-pieaudzis-par-14-miljoniem-kubikmetru.d?id=28794329 

Briefly, in state owned forests logging during the last 11 months has increased by a third, from 6.68 mil. cubic meters last year to 8.89 cubic meters this year, an increase of 2.22 mil cubic meters.

In privately owned forests, municipal forests, and church owned forests logging has increased by 820,000 cubic meters for a comparable period last year.

If you read Latvian, it is worth reading readers’ responses. They give you the ‘feel’ for what is happening.

Here are the numbers for harvesting of state forests since 2000 (1000 m3):-

2000         2001       2002         2003         2004       2005         2006       2007       2008
11 000.4   10 350.5   11 187.2   11 591.1   10 752.0   11 281.2   9 797.1   10 124.7   8 962.0

2008 was low, so it’s no surprise that this year it’s back up.  Trees grow, just like potatoes.  What’s the big deal?

Regarding someone’s earlier point about old growth forest, of course these should be preserved.  If anyone has evidence that the state is cutting old growth forest I would like to see it.

Džons

Latvia has no old growth forests left.
The Latvian wood industry is disturbed that so many logs (zāģbaļķi) are being exported, which means loss of jobs in Latvia, not to mention rapid pace to the deforestation of Latvia. Pick up a copy of “Meža avīze”, a good source of information, though it certainly is not unbiased, seeing that it supports maximum exploitation of forest products.