Nature protection and biodiversity - National Responses (Lithuania)

In Lithuania biodiversity is managed by regulating the use of natural resources and the trade in certain plant and animal species and by establishing special protected areas and gene banks.

Lithuania’s Long-Term Development Strategy envisages preventing the extinction of plants, fungi and animal species and populations, preserving their national genetic resources, increasing forest resources, ensuring their rational use and enhancing productivity and health. The National Sustainable Development Strategy has set the following main long-term objectives for biodiversity: to preserve the biodiversity and identity of the state and its ethnographic regions; to ensure the rational use of biodiversity; to develop the network of protected areas; to increase the share of protected areas to cover 18 % of Lithuanian territory; to expand Lithuania’s forest area by 5 % as a result of afforestation; to enlarge the areas of other natural perennial plants; to enhance the stability of the agrarian landscape; to improve the protection of biodiversity in  marine ecosystems; to protect aquatic ecosystems and to protect and increase natural areas of urbanised landscape and historical green areas.

The volume of timber felled in state-owned forests is controlled and the annual rates of logging are approved each year. With a view to ensuring the rational and continuous use of timber resources, in 2007 the Government of the Republic of Lithuania determined that the  maximum annual level of timber that could be felled in state-owned forests for 2009–2013 is 2.8 million m³. Determining the of timber felling rate will help to ensure the sustainable use of timber resources in state-owned forests and to harmonise the economic and ecological functions of the forests.