Guest pen The state is accelerating the loss of nature through the felling of few natural forests

Human made of cultivated forest is planted on cultivated land, the natural forest is born of nature itself. The natural forest has several structural features of the natural forest, trees of different ages and species, and decaying wood.

Almost a third of Finland’s endangered species depend on old trees, the continuity of the old forest and decaying wood. The stump moss is endangered because it does not have the slow-growing and long-decaying wood it needs in commercial forests. Aarninappu thrives in the damp, over a hundred years old and often with a sloping spruce trunk. These “unsuitable” trees are felled during the management of the commercial forest. The reed needle only grows on the sunny side of a hundred-year-old reindeer and the hermit dwarf on the same reel after it has fallen.

All of these species require a forest continuum – the fact that suitable habitats have been around for a long time. They are unable to overcome large habitat voids. In western Finland, forests have been in economic use for longer than in eastern Finland, and are therefore clearly poorer in species.

To the old ones and there are hundreds of eco-boxes in the natural forest associated with slow-growing trees. These conditions no longer arise: trees in the commercial forest grow too fast and are felled too young. Rapid growth increases the proportion of cellulose in the wood – it becomes soft, rapidly decaying. There are no coils in the commercial forest that will last for centuries.

The natural management of commercial forests cannot solve the problem of the loss of species in natural forests. Only protection will do that.

The mapping of the state’s natural forests has brought to light the harsh reality. Although there is reportedly enough wood, there is little log-sized wood in state forests.

When forests were felled in the 20th century, a 50-meter-wide protection zone on the edge of a lake or swamp was often saved. Now they are being reduced to five-meter-wide rows of wood. The forests in the danger areas have not been felled before because they are difficult to regenerate. Now you can’t afford to save even less than an acre of natural forest falling sharply to the shore.

Also felling of already protected areas has begun. According to Metsähallitus’ interpretation, trees felled by the wind must also be felled from natural sites, ie sites that have been established specifically to protect nature. Metsähallitus’ regional ecological network is not a conservation decision, but a “dynamic process”.

Even experimental areas for open felling in state-owned countries had to be established for previously protected ecological connections because no log-sized wood could be found elsewhere. And the place cannot be changed because no large trees can be found in the unprotected areas. The shortage of logs is screaming.

The state does not have logs in northern Finland in log sizes. In Kainuu, Koillismaa and Lapland, practically all spruce logs cut from state lands now come from the last fragments of natural forests that feed on endangered species.

Natural forests logging must be stopped in accordance with international agreements. The reduction in the revenue required by the state from Metsähallitus was supposed to be a step in that direction, but according to statistics, it has hardly reduced logging.

There are an estimated only 500 square kilometers of state-protected natural forests south of Lapland, just over one percent of Metsähallitus’ commercial forest area. Slightly more areas belong to the regional ecological network, which must now also be protected. These fragments of natural forests do not solve Metsähallitus’ shortage of logs or the problem of natural loss of forests. However, halting the loss of nature is impossible if the state continues to destroy even these small natural forests.

Metsähallitus, which manages the state’s forests, does not itself stop felling natural forests. The situation requires action from politicians. The Government must make a decision on the protection of all remaining state natural forests. Without political guidance, the loss of nature in our forests will continue.

Risto Sulkava

The author is a biologist who participated in a survey of natural forests funded by the Kone Foundation.

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