Policy managment investigation of implementation and non-implementation of forestry plan in Babol Roud, Iran

Non-implementing of forestry plans across Hyrcanian region in Iran has been one of the one of the important major decisions of forest management sector in recent years. This study was carried out to investigate implementing or non-implementing of forestry plan in the Babol Roud, Mazandaran province. Furthermore, Cochran's relationship was used to determine the number of respondents, whereas Delphi technique was used to adjust questionnaires, which were distributed among 32 people (16 local communities and 16 forestry plan’s staff) for subsequent SWOT analysis. The SWOT analysis was used to analyze the opinions of stakeholders, the process of receiving feedback was purposefully performed. Then, their comments were tested and analyzed. The results of the SWOT evaluation matrix showed that the statistical community demands an aggressive strategy to implement the forestry plan and a defensive strategy in case of its non-implementation. The most important strength of implementing the forestry plan were identified as survival guarantee of the tree stands, whereas non-implementation was assessed to be associated with non-intensive harvest beyond forest capacity. In contrast, the most significant weaknesses were identified as soil and existing hydrological system degradation as well as intense forest invasion (wood smuggling, land use change), respectively. Overall, results generally indicated that in both methods the most majority of the statistical community in the study opposed stopping forestry plans which resulted in ongoing and upcoming economic and environmental problems. Likewise, the major revision of forestry plans’ current condition along with their codification and using alternative management strategies were suggested in order to comprehensively meet the beneficiary needs.