In the Czech Republic, the present state forest administration is incorporated into general state administration. Municipalities with extended competence (MECs) as first-instance forest administration bodies thus perform the so-called “mixed” administration. Besides forestry, MECs cumulatively perform hunting and fishing administration, observing several different laws. On an example of three MECs in South Bohemia (České Budějovice, Týn nad Vltavou and Písek), the paper analyses the decision-making processes and control activities concerning the implementation of administrative activity, particularly the Forest Act. The findings show that during the observed period 2011–2015, the most frequently conducted administrative proceedings under the Forest Act involved binding opinions regarding permission for buildings at a distance of fewer than 50 m from the forest and decisions on timber harvesting. Other frequently performed acts somewhat surprisingly concerned issuing licenses for professional forest managers and decisions whether or not the land fulfils forest functions. Based on the findings, the paper also suggests stimuli and suggestions (de lege ferenda) for changes in the Forest Act and other regulations relating to this issue.
Deforestation is a global threat in the form of the reduction of all of the ecosystem services provided to humans by forest ecosystems. For this reason, this article deals with the protection of forest ecosystem services by searching for a substitute for wood biomass. In recent years, the post-harvest residues of agricultural crops have been used mainly for energy and material uses. If this raw material is to be used industrially in the long term, we must have an idea of its future production. In most studies, predictions of future post-harvest residue productions are resolved in terms of the availability for energy sectors. This paper deals with the total amount of produced post-harvest residues that can be taken from the field; the post-harvest residue production for selected sectors is not subtracted from the overall prediction. Post-harvest residue production was estimated using the residue to product ratio (RPR), wherein the RPR coefficient was calculated for the monitored crops in each year, and the post-harvest residue production was subsequently calculated in each year according to the conversion rate characteristic for each year. The production of two widespread agricultural crops—wheat and rapeseed—was predicted. Linear regression models were used for the estimations. Based on these models, we predict the production of 58.3 million tonnes of post-harvest wheat residues and 22.4 million tonnes of post-harvest rapeseed residues in 2030 in the European Union. In the Czech Republic, we predict the production of 1.8 million tonnes of post-harvest wheat residues and 1.3 million tonnes of post-harvest rapeseed residues. The presented results can be used as the basis for further considerations of the material use of post-harvest residues and for the substitution of wood with these residues.
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