Opinions of forest administration chief officers in Artvin Regional Directorate of Forestry about preparation and application phases of forest management plans

In this study, based on the example of Artvin Regional Directorate of Forestry, it is aimed to display the viewpoints of forest administration chief officers as regards planning who are the basic elements of interest groups and who implement plans, determine their opinions about the problems they encounter during preparation and application phases of plans, and develop solution proposals. Within this study a survey was performed with 31 forest administration chief officers in Artvin Regional Directorate of Forestry. According to the survey results, at planning phase it has been seen that participatory processes are put into force, certain criteria and indicators are adopted in differentiating between forest functions at inventory stage, which were also taken into consideration during planning, and in particularly stand parameters were determined accurately. Also during planning phase, it is believed that, endemic, rare and endangered targeted plant and wild animal species are evaluated, whereas non-wood forest types suffer from a lack of evaluation. In addition, it was concluded that lack or insufficiency of silviculture plans, the size of forest administration chiefdom and relations problems between forest administration and local people were being experienced. By integrating other interest groups to planning process, widening the scope of the sudty and realizing similar studies in different regional directorates of forestry, we can determine common points and differences and by this way new strategies can be developed