Forestry vs. Nature protection in forests: regional economic opportunity-costs of the Bavarian Forest National Park

This study takes a look at regional economic opportunity costs in terms of foregone value added of an alternative land use of the Bavarian Forest National Park, as in forestry use inclusive of further processing in the sawmilling industry in comparison to nature tourism. Depending on the assumed amount of timber which were to be sustainably harvested within the national park territory (150,000 to 175,000 solid cubic metre), presumed round timber prices (40 to 80 (sic)/solid cubic metre), variable sawn timber prices (120 to 200 (sic)/m(3)) as well as the proportion of value added typical for the saw milling industry a total of approximately EUR 4.98 to 10.76 million p.a. was to be generated (Table 1). Comparing these opportunity costs with the value added of tourism induced by the national park of annually EUR 13.5 million (Table 2) it is to be stated that (in each case on the first value-added step) national park tourism nearly in any case generates a higher value added (Table 3). From a regional economic perspective this is even truer since the profits of state-owned forest enterprises nearly completely flow out of the region and do not take effect in subsequent rounds as regional additional assets. Furthermore only a bit more than one third of the timber cut in the national park region is processed in regional sawmills (Figure 1). Thereafter a national park with a strict nature protection scheme appears to be the economically favourable option - especially since intangible values of the Bavarian Forest National Park were not considered within this analysis.