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The wood that grows in our forest is not only an important raw material but also creates thousands of jobs, with over 3,500 people living from incomes earned in forestry.

One third of the total area of Vorarlberg - around 94,000 hectares – is covered in forest.

Around half of our forest is protective forest. This protects settlements and transport routes from mudflows and avalanches.

The natural development of the forest in Vorarlberg is evidenced by the distribution of tree types: most areas have a balanced mix of trees with a predominance of spruce.

The annual growth of timber amounts to 6.6 cubic meters per hectare. This means that twice as much wood is grown in Vorarlberg as is used.

Our forest grows at altitudes between 396 metres and 2,187 metres above sea level. Two thirds of the trees are at an altitude of over 1,000 metres.

The majority of Vorarlberg's forest is divided up over almost 6,000 private owners. Large companies as in the eastern federal states are seldom, agricultural cooperatives and communal forests exist mainly in the south of the state.

A precondition of sustainable, natural forest management is access to the forest on roads suitable for motorised vehicles. Forest roads facilitate the rapid introduction of protective measures, for example, after a heavy blowdown (processing of damaged wood).

Major threats to our forest come from air pollution, insects, weather and wild animals.

Our forest is a special, natural character element of our cultural landscape and an important factor in the scenic beauty of Vorarlberg. The forest improves the quality of the air by generating oxygen, and soot and dust are filtered by the forest canopy.

Wood has a long tradition in Vorarlberg as a domestic, renewable building material and fuel. As the growth of wood is double what is used, there is a large reserve which has to be used up.

Vorarlberg is the only State in Austria to have set up a fund to save the forest. The fund is used to finance 20 different forestry measures such as processing of damaged wood, forest maintenance, recovery of timber with horses, training of forestry apprentices, maintenance of protective forest, felling etc.