Forest Infrastructure Development

Roads and Camps

Establishing forest infrastructure, such as forest roads, camps, log yards and workshops can cause severe impacts on the environment and on your business, unless these are well designed, constructed and maintained. In tropical forest management, road construction and maintenance costs are often higher than those of prescribed road standards. Excessive road width and inappropriate road profiles are some of the common reasons causing a waste of productive forest area, high timber traffic speeds with increased accident risks, as well as unnecessary soil erosion and water pollution. Due to these negative environmental impacts settlement areas are frequently affected in their livelihood. This results in conflicts between forest based communities and forest managers.
Forest roads can be constructed in a way that serves the purpose of both general infrastructure development and log transportation in an effective and safe manner, based on environmental management standards. A key requirement of properly designed forest roads is to create smooth road gradients with all weather surfacing materials, allowing for constant traffic speeds and low wear and tear on timber trucks and other vehicles, even under adverse weather conditions. Other important aspects are proper road compaction, safe and durable bridges, and effective water drainage systems to facilitate water runoff and avoid softening of the road body.
ifmc is experienced in environmentally friendly forest road planning and construction at reasonable costs. We can train forest infrastructure managers in constructing roads that minimise unnecessary environmental damage, accident cases, and road construction and maintenance costs.