The forested areas on the planet have been shrinking for years. Actually, every year forests on this planet diminish by 13 million hectars. Paradoxically, in the Czech Republic the forested areas are growing - we simply know how to "do forests" and thus we can share our forestry know-how with others, and why not with Mongolians?
The forests in Mongolia cover around 7 % of the overall surface of the Earth. The vegetation is exposed to the extreme conditions typical for the continental climate in the area, and thus the vegetation is characterized with low productivity, slow growth and sensitivity to human and natural factors such as drought, wildfires, parasites and diseases, and they easily loose ecological balance. As a consequence of the wildfires the forested areas have decresead by 3,6 % at the turn of the millennium. It is of no surprise that the strategic document on economic and social development of Mongolia mentions forestry and natural resources management as one of the top priorities. Equally, the development cooperation program 2011-2017 on Mongolia defines forestry jointly with agriculture and fishery as the priority sectors of the development cooperation.
The project "Development of Forests and the Gene Pool of Local Forest Tree Ecotypes in Mongolia" aims to contribute to the development of the ecotypes of local forests and to the renewal of ecologically stable forests, in the long term an increased forest coverage is expected. Today, we already celebrate the project first success. The nursery constructed in between 2015-2016 in the cooperative Domogt Sharyn Gol is fully functional and its capacity of around 100 000 seedlings will soon be completed. The second nursery is situated at the Darchan University which allows university students to benefit from practical classes in the nursery. Besides that, multiple trainings for local foresters from the Chongor cooperative have taken place, as well as workshops within the project MLP financed by the Czech Embassy in Ulanbaatar. The local authorities' representatives as well as employees from the Ministry of Environment and Tourism took part in this workshop.
The forestry know-how is well explained in the interview with Richard Slaby, expert in forest management - you may read it in Czech.
The following video shows one of the workshops for the Mongolian foresters that are learning how to apply the Patrik method. You can also learn more about the Patrik method here.