Columns The most iconic landscapes in Finland are left thanks to the “shimmers”

In Finland there are certain landscapes for which conservation decisions would have been taken for granted at the time. Surely the national landscapes were guarded in one inch? For example, the rugged rapids of Kuusamo or the Urho Kekkonen National Park or the most beautiful bogs or the little evergreen forests of Southern Finland? The landscapes over which the shooting planes fly Finlandian when, for example, on Independence Day, the beauty of Finland has to be shown on television.

The truth, however, is that the protection of those landscapes is the result of struggles. They probably wouldn’t be left without the “shimmers” and “marginal people” of their time. Even a few national parks have been born without an uphill battle, where the motives of the patrons and sometimes the fullness have been questioned.

This I woke up when I read the freshman of nature journalist Juha Kauppinen Awakenings-book. In the book, Kauppinen uses interviews with contemporary sources to go through the recent history of Finnish nature conservation: the struggle for forest protection, the struggle for protection, the struggle for the Natura network, the struggle for the importance of nature conservation in general.

There is a scene in the book where Kauppinen tells tourists admiring the Jyrävä waterfall in Kuusamo along Karhunkierros that there were other plans for the rapids in question a few decades ago. Jyrävä was to be harnessed for the use of hydropower, and the reversal of the entire direction of the Kitkajoki River was proposed. Tourists do not believe. The plan was thwarted in the 1960s by a counter-movement mobilized by Reino Rinte, a local journalist and his own road walker.

Urho Kekkonen the national park in eastern and northern lapland is another example of how the protection of even the most iconic landscapes has required its struggle. The wilderness, known as the Northeast, was wanted to be protected in the 1970s, and more than 100,000 citizens wrote an address on its behalf. However, Metsähallitus would have cut the protection sector in half. In the end, Rauno Ruuhijärvi, chairman of the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation and professor of botany, came up with a proposal to designate the protected area according to the president in order to give the statesman an 80-year-old gift worthy of him.

In the book, Ruuhijärvi, in his nineties, recalls the FAQ episode as a strategic battle that turned out to be a victory, which it was. The name idea saved. “It was a tactic, a crude tactic.”

The author is an HS correspondent.