Founded in 2005, the Latvian Forest Owners' Association (Latvijas Meža īpašnieku biedrība, LMĪB) is the leading national organisation representing private forest owners in Latvia. In 2025 the association marked its 20th anniversary, celebrating two decades of advocacy, education and community-building on behalf of the country's forest-owning families.
LMĪB brings together more than 450 direct members, financed primarily through membership fees, and works closely with a wider network of forestry professionals, institutions and European partners. Membership keeps growing: 28 new forest owners joined in 2024 alone. The association's mission is to protect the economic, legal and social interests of private forest owners and to promote profitable, sustainable and multifunctional forest management.
Its core activities centre on policy advocacy: drafting legislative proposals, sitting on ministerial working groups and, where necessary, supporting constitutional complaints on behalf of members. In 2024 alone, this work contributed to a government working group on compensation for restricted forestry operations, a State Forest Service action plan against the eight-toothed spruce bark beetle, and simplified conditions for Rural Development Plan support.
Beyond advocacy, LMĪB invests in knowledge-sharing: Knowledge Days organised with the Latvian State Forest Research Institute “Silava”, online seminars, and the annual “Best Maintained Forest” contest and “Golden Cone” (Zelta čiekurs) award, run jointly with the Ministry of Agriculture and the Forest Industry Federation, spotlighting good forestry practice nationwide.
Internationally, LMĪB is Latvia's only landowner representative in the European Landowners' Organization, an active member of the Confederation of European Forest Owners with a seat on its Board, and of the International Family Forestry Alliance.
Since 2025, LMĪB has also been an active partner in the Horizon Europe project SMURF (Sustainable Management Models and Value Chains for Small Forests), which brings together organisations from 15 European countries to develop management models suited to small forest holdings - the kind of properties most of Latvia's more than 116,000 forest owners hold. Through SMURF, LMĪB is surveying Latvian forest owners about their practices and challenges, from ownership fragmentation to access to finance, and exchanging experience with peer organisations abroad, including at the European conference on small forest holdings held at the FAO headquarters in Rome in May 2025. The goal is to turn this exchange into practical guidance and policy proposals that help small forest owners manage their land more profitably and sustainably, reinforcing LMĪB's vision of a resilient, well-managed forest sector for future generations.
