From: p37006r@kaira.hut.fi (Matti Ikonen)
Subject: NEWS: Finnish forest protection situation
Organization: Helsinki University of Technology, Finland
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1992 18:32:03 GMT

HERE'S SOME BACKROUND INFO ABOUT FINNISH FORESTS. THIS ARTICLE WAS
WRITTEN BY JARMO PYYKKA FOR THE TAIGA NEWS.

Old-Growth Situation in Finland 

There is about to come a conservation programme for old-growth forests on state
land in southern part of Finland. 

The programme proposal covers 23 000 ha of land, of which 16 800 ha forest. The
rest is mainly bogland with no economic value. This minimal proposal would
raise the overall forest conservation rate from 0.38% to 0.53% in the
inventory area restricted to the southern part of Finland. In the whole
of the country this would mean an increase from 2.1% to approximately
2.2%. This is one of the lowest figures in the world, far from sufficient.

This step has no chance to stop the extinction processes among those threatened
species that need old-growth forests as their habitat. Of the 1700 threatened
species in Finland, this group covers about one third. The Committee of
Monitoring of Threatened Animals and Plants which has done this classification
sees our  modern forestry practices as the main cause behind the present
situation.

Already in 1987 OECD recommended that all remaining natural forests in Finland
should be protected immediately. The survey of these forests started in 1989,
but almost nothing was done before 1992. It's obvious, that the current
proposal was done on the basis of insufficient information. There are
large areas of natural forests that haven't been examined thoroughly,
or that have been set aside with no survey whatsoever. It was no
surprise, that most of the proposed conservation areas are situated in
the north-eastern part of the country, where enough resources were
allocated for this purpose. Elsewhere, allocations remained minimal or
non-existent.  

All private-owned lands still remain unsurveyed. But it's a common known fact
that these forests have been much more intensively used ever since the end of
last century and so in spite of their relative abundance and current maturity
possess considerably less actual natural forest values. They are also very
expensive to protect because of the strong possition of private ownership in
Finland. We see that the first and most crucial step now is to protect
old-growth forests in the areas they are still found. The next ones must
concern private lands and what's as important the necessary change in
forestry methods. 

Also the criteria, the image of almost totally intact virgin forest, was
determined to a great extent by political considerations.This idealistic image
was being kept as a target type also after it was realized that those classical
virgin types couldnUt be found anymore. Not in the numbers and size that would
be sufficient to fulfil the purpose of the whole programme, species protection.
What was even more drastic was that various logging interest groups using
forestry employment speculations were powerful enough to drop at least 10 000
ha clearly defined old-growth forests from the proposal.

The cutting of these last old-growth forests was presented as an economic
necessity in these areas which have suffered from constant high unemployment
rate during the whole period after the second world-war. This argument is based
on illusions. These are relatively underdeveloped areas which have been treated
as mainly timber sources with no clear alternatives offered or allowed to exist
by the central government. They are facing a similar vicious circle as most
developing countries. Mechanisation which is the most important reason behind
unemployment is easily forgotten when conservation is presented by the state
logging parastatal, the National Board of Forestry, as the main scapegoat. 

The Old-Growth Programme in its proposed form would cost at most 61 jobs in the
whole country -  while over 9 000 lumberjacks are currently unemployed.
Decrease in the number employed in timber production has been constant during
the last 20 years, from 90 000 employed in timber production in 1970 to only 32
000 last year. According to the latest estimates an additional amount of almost
4000 lumberjacks are going to lose their jobs before the end of this year.

This all happens in a country where the annual outturn of commercial wood is
almost 25 million cubic meters less than allowable cut. There is a huge risk
that this minimal programme is going to be used as the final stage in the area
of forest conservation that we can afford as a nation in the foreseeable
future.


Jarmo Pyykko



Matti.Ikonen@hut.fi
Newsgroups: sci.environment