Forest Managers' Perceptions of the Foremost Forestry Issues and Functions in Turkey

Abstract

Forestry organization is both the main stakeholder in policy making and the application process, and an important policy instrument in reaching policy objectives. Thus, the managers of national forestry organizations play an important role in achieving the sustainable use and management of forest resources. The main aim of this paper is to determine Turkish forest managers' perceptions of the main forestry issues and the factors that influence these perceptions. In this direction, the opinions of top-level managers of the Turkish Regional Forest Directorates toward forest functions, the problems that occur during the management process, and foremost issues to gain importance in the future were evaluated through a questionnaire. The study covers all 27 regional forest directorates, which conduct their activities all over the country under the General Directorate of Forestry. The results of the study show that forest managers recognize the importance of sociocultural and environmental-ecological functions of forest resources, similar to international trends. They also strongly emphasized some problems associated with national circumstances such as cadastral and ownership problems, deficiency in personnel motivation, and problems occurring in forest-society relations.