The Finnish guidebook on Russian forestry "Luoteis-Venäjän metsätalouden taskutieto", published in 2005, got excellent feedback from its readers, but also found its way to the hands of non-Finnish-speaking audience asking for a translation, which gave the idea to translate the guidebook also into English. Some small updating and alterations have been made since the publishing of the guidebook in Finnish, but generally the publication presents the most current information available at the time of writing the Finnish version.

The publication presents the basic information about Russian forest resources, their administration and utilisation, forest conservation as well as forest management. In addition, the ongoing renewal pertaining to the forest legislation and administration is briefly discussed. In the chapter about forest utilisation the allowable and actual cuts for different regions of Northwest Russia are given and the guidelines for forest utilisation are described. The logging methods and Russian harvesting technology are presented briefly. In the chapter about forest industry the annual production figures and locations of production plants for sawmill and wood-based panel industry as well as for chemical forest industry are given. In addition, the competitiveness, investments and foreign trade of Russian forest industry are discussed.

Publication: Karvinen, Sari, Välkky, Elina, Torniainen, Tatu & Gerasimov, Yuri. Northwest Russian Forestry in a Nutshell. Working Papers of the Finnish Forest Research Institute 30. 98 s.