The national working forest area increased last year by approximately 0.03 percent from 2022, while the volume of harvested timber was 5.3 percent down, shows data released on Friday by the National Institute of Statistics (INS).

As of December 31, 2023, the working forest area was 6,615,668 hectares (+2,284 hectares compared to 2022), of which woodland accounted for a total of 6,459,925 hectares. Last year, the latter increased by approximately 0.05 percent, or 3,159 hectares, compared to the previous year. Forests account for 97.6 percent of the national working forest area.

The largest amount of timber was harvested in the North-East development region (28 percent of the total harvested volume), followed by the Center development region (23.3 percent), the West (12.5 percent), North-West (12 percent), South-Muntenia (9.6 percent), South-West Oltenia (7.5 percent), South-East (6.7 percent), and Bucharest-Ilfov (0.4 percent) development regions.

The largest areas to have forest regeneration works carried out were in the development regions North-East (21.3 percent of the total regenerated area), South-East (17.6 percent), and Center (16.5 percent), followed by the North-West (11.6 percent), South-Muntenia (11.5 percent), West (11.3 percent), South-West Oltenia (9.6 percent), and Bucharest – Ilfov (0.6 percent) regions.

AGERPRES