Government is the number reform the Nature Conservation Act still this year, but there is widespread controversy over the articles of the law between both the governing parties and the ministries.
The Greens in particular and the center have quarreled over the article.
There is also a tough twist between the Ministry of the Environment (YM) and the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MMM). MMM knocks out in many respects exceptionally loudly in its draft opinion.
The negotiations, which lasted at the beginning of the year, were so stalled that in the summer, a 259-page bill prepared by an official of the Ministry of the Environment went for a round of statements.
The consultation closed on 6 September. Based on the statements, the Office is currently preparing a new version for political consideration. The law is due to be passed by Parliament in January next year.
In statements business life knocks out many proposals, while environmental organizations receive a more favorable reception from the law.
This is a far-reaching reform. It replaces the current Nature Conservation Act of 1997.
The guideline of the law is Sanna Marinin (sd) a government program aimed at halting the loss of biodiversity in Finland.
According to the Ministry of the Environment, one in nine Finnish species and almost half of habitats are endangered, so additional measures and protection are urgently needed.
Read more: Sixth mass extinction already threatens human living conditions – “Up to a million species could be extinct in the coming decades”
One of the goals of the new Nature Conservation Act is to slow down climate change. This is done, among other things, so that the authorities can also use climate change as a criterion when establishing nature reserves. Species can be moved to a new area on state lands if the problems caused to the species by climate change so require.
The law also strengthens the rights of the Sámi in their areas of residence.
Ministry of the Environment Legislative Adviser Pasi Kallio says that from the citizens’ point of view, there are no very radical changes in the law.
“One significant change visible to citizens is the inclusion of habitats in the law much more strongly than at present. At the moment, they are narrowly protected, ”says Kallio.
MMM Board Counselor Vilppu Winter Road believes that the bill poses major threats to landowners and forestry.
“It’s really just thinking about biodiversity here, but the economic and social aspects have been forgotten. There are not enough impact assessments and justifications at all, ”says Talvitie.
HS goes through key changes and controversies.
Archipelago Sea National Park underwater nature trail in the coastal waters of Stora Hästö Island. Pictured are sea urchins.
Habitat protection
Ministry of the Environment the bill extends the protection of habitats in many respects.
The bill divides habitats into three groups from a conservation perspective. There would be about 80 endangered habitats.
Stricter protection than an endangered habitat would be with a protected habitat of about ten.
Protected habitats would be largely sandy beaches, fields, hardwood forests, walnut groves, alder forests, seaside meadows and deciduous meadows, as well as inland floodplains, coastal wooded dunes and ridges of ridges. The leaf meadow is a sparse traditional meadow created by mowing and grazing, among other things.
At the same time, sea urchin bottoms and sheltered seabream beds, as well as natural and nature-like streams located outside Lapland, which are about 5,500 kilometers away, would be added to the Water Act as new protected habitats.
The sea urchin is the only fully submerged seed plant in the Baltic Sea that forms underwater meadows on sandy bottoms. These meadows are important for algae, invertebrates and fry.
Crabs are large aquatic algae that thrive in shallow, soft-bottomed bays. They can form dense meadows that provide habitat for many fish.
Endangered and protected habitats would be listed in a government decree or law. The identification of endangered habitats is still ongoing.
New is that the law directly records strictly protected species that would be protected by law without a decision by the authority.
These habitats would be limestone cliffs, serpentine cliffs, rocks and gravel ridges, as well as open coastal dunes.
The rock material of serpentine rocks, pebbles and gravel pits is ultra-alkaline. They are home to an abundance of endangered species, although for most plants they are even toxic growing media.
There are a total of a few thousand square kilometers of these habitats in Finland. There are dunes on the coast in Hankoniemi, Yyteri, Uusikaarlepyy and in many places on the coast of the Gulf of Bothnia.
Endangered habitats include, among other things, ridges of ridges, which number about 80,000 hectares, but perhaps only a few thousand hectares for protection.
The dunes of Yyteri’s sandy beach are largely already protected, but the new bill would also protect smaller dunes directly by law.
MMM fears that endangered habitats will be zoned in municipalities for protection, as they and endangered species should be taken into account when drawing up the plan.
Fear is compounded by the introduction of the precautionary principle into law, which requires that a significant threat to diversity be taken into account in decision-making, even if knowledge of the effects is incomplete or uncertain.
The law will also introduce a new duty of clarity, according to which the landowner should be sufficiently aware of the effects of his actions on nature, but the landowner does not need to know every nest and protected site in his area.
“If endangered habitats were regulated by a regulation, it would mean that an amendment to the regulation could put a huge part of commercial forests in a situation where the area would be defined as endangered,” says MMM’s Talvitie.
He fears that these endangered habitats will be included in the formula. “The compensation received by the landowner for the plan protection has not been appropriate, and otherwise nature conservation should be implemented primarily through nature conservation,” he says.
The cormorant is a really controversial bird in Finnish nature. The law is intended to prohibit the destruction of cormorant nests throughout the year.
Protection of species
Ministry of the Environment considers that there will be no significant changes to the provisions for endangered species.
The law would prohibit the deliberate killing or destruction of birds during the breeding season, as is the case today. What would be new would be that it would be forbidden throughout the year to destroy nests of endangered species that use the same nest continuously.
In practice, in addition to large birds of prey, there would be an estimated 20 species covered by the ban, such as the gull, king fisherman, black grouse, cormorant, falcon, mountain hawk and a few other birds of prey.
MMM and the forest industry, among others, oppose the article.
“MMM opposes the article and requires a statement in the section prohibiting the deliberate killing and capture of protected animals that ‘the proposed regulation cannot be considered to prevent the logging of commercial forests during the nesting period’.”
“This is also about the interpretation of MMM. The aim of this law is not to prohibit or strengthen summer felling, ”says YM’s Kallio.
MMM, MTK and other critics justify their opposition, among other things, by the fact that the landowner cannot know all the nests of protected organisms, let alone distinguish which nest or cavity is intended for continuous use.
Nature panel says in its own statement that logging is best banned during the nesting season altogether.
In the bill, the role of the Nature Panel, which will become the Finnish Nature Panel, would be strengthened to be similar to the role of the Climate Panel in climate change.
The task of the Finnish Nature Panel would be to produce, compile and specify scientific information for the planning, implementation, monitoring and decision-making of biodiversity policy measures.
MMM is critical of the Nature Panel’s ability to look at non-biodiversity perspectives.
The bill would also include the capercaillie on the list of protected animals, but the capercaillie could be moved or killed in the yard and in an emergency if the transfer is not successful. The Finnish Association for Nature finds it strange that the Nature Conservation Act would still allow permission to kill Kyi.
Read more: A scary message arrives from the sky: At the southernmost tip of Finland, there is a place closed to the public where the alert state of Finland’s nature is perhaps more clearly visible than anywhere else.
Ecological compensation
One one of the biggest political cinemas is the so-called ecological compensation.
In practice, the landowner, company or state should compensate for the damage to the habitat or habitat of the species, for example by restoring another area of degraded nature towards the biodiversity target.
Compensation is opposed by MMM and business, among others.
Nature reserves
The proposal according to the minimum size of national parks will be increased from one thousand to three thousand hectares. This is also opposed by many nature conservation organizations.
A ban on mineral exploration is proposed for the nature reserve, which is not the case for MMM and the business community.
Public authorities will have a duty to raise citizens’ environmental awareness.
MMM accuses this point of being “ideologically colored” because, in MMM’s view, it focuses only on ecological sustainability and ignores economic and social sustainability.
According to the draft law, minks could also be destroyed in nature reserves.
Field sports
Lakia prepared by several dissenting working groups, but there is not much disagreement on hunting.
The law should give the right to hurry deer and white-tailed deer from a protected area to be killed outside the area. Alien species such as marshes and minks could also be killed in the nature reserve.
One separate issue in Finland – as in many other European countries – is the common white-fronted goose, which is on the EU’s list of protected animal species, so it is also protected in Finland.
The bill does not mention white-fronted geese, but these types of animals could exceptionally be killed or deported to a wider area.
According to the proposal, white-fronted geese shot should not be eaten or otherwise used. In MMM’s opinion, it would have been possible for Finland to facilitate the prevention of harm caused by the white-fronted goose by means of exemptions. According to it, it makes more sense to use killed geese than to bury them in the ground.
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