Status of protected forests

In 2009, the Norwegian Environment Agency started work on a monitoring system for protected areas. In 2012, it was decided that the monitoring should be coordinated with the National Forest Inventory (NFI). NFI has a network of a total of 22,000 sample plots distributed throughout the country. Additional sample plots have been established for protected forests, enabling monitoring of the development over time.

The NFI survey results show that the area of protected forest in Norway has increased by over 20 percent, covering 600,000 hectares, nearly 5 percent of the total forest area. More primary forest is being protected. Today 1.8 percent of the forest area is classified as primary forest (forest with no traces of forestry or other human influence). The NFI records show that 21 percent of Norway's primary forest are now located in protected areas, a slight increase from the previous survey.

A significantly smaller proportion of the productive forest is protected, compared to the unproductive forest areas. Productive forest refers to forest that can produce at least 1 m³ of timber (with bark) per hectare per year on average. While 3.7 percent of the productive forest is protected, with no logging allowed, 7.9 percent of the unproductive forest is protected. Thus, there is a shortage of protection for forests in areas with good growth conditions, even though the area of productive forest has increased.

NFI-measurements show that there is more deadwood in protected forests for all site quality classes compared to non-protected areas – even in unproductive forest. A larger proportion of large-diameter deadwood, i.e., tree trunks with more than 30 cm in diameter, has also been recorded.