Forest lands are the main means of production in the forest sector. For the most territories in the Russian Federation there are established methods of cadastral appraisal, but not for the forest regions taking up 2/3 of the country’s area. In 2002 Russian Government made an attempt to solve this problem and recommended a method of cadastral appraisal for the lands of the forestry fund. However, the method did not find practical application and was dismissed in 2010, and no substitution followed. In each subject of the Russian Federation private appraisers offer their own options of forest land valuation, but their results differ significantly even for the lands with comparable species of wood, productivity, site quality and age composition of the stand. Moreover, valuation organizations do not take into account forest infrastructure. Authors propose a universal method suitable for the entire territory of the country, which will allow to calculate specific cadastral value of the forest lands taking into account taxation indices of the wood stands growing there. The method is suitable not only for the objective cadastral valuation of the forest lands – reasonable rental payments will provide an opportunity to develop transport infrastructure in the forestry fund, especially forest roads and bridges, and to make timely arrangements for plant maintenance, forest protection and reproduction, which will have a significant influence on social and economic development of forest regions in Russia.
For several decades, Russian scientists cannot solve the problem of cadastral valuation of forest lands, which occupy two thirds of the country area. This evaluation is especially important in the terms of market relations for the calculation of charges for use of forest resources, a significant part of which is leased. Originally, cadastral valuation of forestland was planned to be conducted according to Faustmann’s formula, proposed by German economist in the mid-nineteenth century, but it has not found practical application due to the lack of certain data. In the modern period the issue of forestland valuation is escalated and scientists have proposed their own versions of the cadastral value of forestlands. We investigated a number of forestland cadastral evaluation reports from various regions of Russia. Different researchers propose to use a specific indicator of cadastral cost (UPCS), but the methods of calculation of this indicator are different for all the evaluators. Respectively, the UPCS values for each region are significantly different too. Years of research into this problem allowed us to propose a method of forestland cadastral evaluation. In the calculations, the shortcomings of previous research are taken into account and the value of income from harvested timber, its current growth in plantings under the age of ripeness as well as the income from the collection of food resources (mushrooms and berries) are included in the evaluation. In the calculations, lands should be differentiated between coniferous and deciduous forests, as the cost of timber and the yield of food resources are significantly different. The proposed method has allowed establishing the ratio of income of forestland from timber and food resources. Food resources can give more income to the society than the wood itself.
