The Situation and Evaluation of Forest Harvesting Methods in Turkey

The present study summarize and evaluate major problems of timber harvesting in Turkey and the future principles and objectives have been defined. Timber harvesting in Turkey is still carried out by manual methods due to economical, social and environmental constraints. Almost 80% of harvesting activities are mechanized in many developed countries while this value is only 5% in Turkey. Overall ratio of mechanization is relatively low. Approximately percentage of man power, animal power, machine power and skyline harvesting are 72, 15, 8 and 5%, respectively. The need for forest roads in total in Turkey was 201810 km and that 133693 km portion on which, corresponding to 66.25% was constructed by end of 2003.