Assessment of non-wood-producing functions of the forest as forest services to the public

Forest ecosystems are among the most important constituents of the environment in the Czech Republic. Today, practically all full social forest services have a character of environmental forest services that are funded both from public sources and from the proper market wood-producing forest service that fulfils the non-wood-producing functions even in this respect. It is primarily for the purposes of estimating the effectiveness of expenditure from public budgets when it is required to define the value of the significance of forest services to the public with respect to the fulfilment of non-wood-producing functions of the forest. Particularly important is to assess the expenditure on environment conservation that is an inseparable part of the public expenditure. An assessment based on the valuation of forest functions can be considered as a convincing method for the assessment of the significance of forest services to the public with respect to the fulfilment of non-wood-produc ing functions. It is however necessary that a consistent distinction is made between the significance of the nonwood-producing functions of the forests for the society and the assessment of forest services to the public in the framework of management of these non-wood-producing forest functions (with the primary classification of the forest into two fundamental blocks – production and non-production ones – being left as natural and traditional classification).