The potential barriers to persistence and development of small scale coppice forest management in Europe

Coppice is considered to be the oldest form of sustainable forest management and is still abundant with an estimated resource of more than 20 million hectares of forest currently managed as coppice across Europe and even more was formerly managed in this way. In the past the Roundwood was important, particularly for fuel, but, from early in the 20th century the most prevalent form of management changed to favour high forest systems, driven by increased use of fossil fuels, demand for larger timber and advances in technology. As a result, many coppices were converted to high forest, over planted or abandoned. There has been a resurgence of interest in coppice management as a component of sustainable forest management and it is increasingly recognised that coppice provides a diverse range of products and services of value to The EuroCoppice COST Action set out to consider how this traditional practice could developed into a modern multifunctional system to increase the benefits from this currently under-utilised resource with representatives from member states contributing to different working groups to consider how this could be achieved. This paper has been produced by members of Working Group (WG) 5, “Ownership and Governance” who had the task of looking at potential barriers to increasing coppice management and how these could be overcome. The first step towards achieving this goal was to find out the current situation regarding coppice management in the countries involved in the Action.