The most intensive nesting period is from mid-April to mid-summer, when the birds must be given the opportunity to have and rear offspring. According to the Nature Conservation Act, it is prohibited to intentionally disturb wild birds during nesting and brood rearing.
According to Rainer Vakra, Director General of the Environmental Board, it is encouraging that many forest owners are considerate of the spring nesting peace. ‘Last year, forest owners and managers complied with the spring-summer nesting peace requirement almost twice as well as the year before. Even though the inspectors will not start their scheduled inspections until mid-April, it is already good to pay attention when walking in nature and to plan logging so as not to disturb the nesting of wild birds,’ Vakra claimed.
Logging has the greatest impact on the population of birds in old-grown stands of fertile habitat types, where the diversity and population density of birds are highest. Similarly to the previous year, the Environmental Board will mostly focus its inspections on the stands where respecting nesting peace is most important. ‘When restricting activities, we act on a case-by-case basis, following the principle of reasonableness. If only possible breeding is detected, then the logging will be allowed to continue,’ explained Vakra.
Last year, the Environmental Board prepared a guideline for verifying compliance with the nesting peace and a population density matrix for breeding birds, based on stand type and age. No changes have been made this year to these guidelines.
The population density matrix for breeding birds and the guidelines for verifying compliance with the nesting peace can be found on the website of the Environmental Board. Forest owners will be able to check from the forest portal Metsaportaal the habitat type and age of a forest stand based on forest management data and use this to assess the likelihood of birds nesting in the forest patch.
For advice and assistance, please contact the customer support of the Estonian Environmental Board on 662 5999 or by email klienditugi@keskkonnaamet.ee.
In 2022, during the nesting peace, 30 logging operations were halted and the breeding of 12 protected species was detected. In 2021, the Environmental Board received 160 complaints of nesting peace disturbances related to logging, in 2022 only 92. A change can also be seen in the number of appeals: two years ago, there were 13 appeals against precepts to stop logging – last year only one.
