The management of endangered traditional environments is decreasing, even though the goal was to increase the managed areas.
Thence it's almost twenty years since Mariko Lindgren read the objectives of the agricultural policy. All kinds of beautiful things about promoting diversity were written there.
Lindgren got excited: this is what he could do! He had already completed his training as a biologist.
Soon he also had sheep. He moved from Kuopio to North Karelia, to the small village of Saramo, 25 kilometers from the center of Nurme.
Lindgren's goal was to save traditional landscapes and their endangered species and at the same time take care of food security as an organic farmer.
Lindgren took more sheep and trained more. He first obtained a basic degree in agriculture and then a professional degree in animal husbandry. He became an entrepreneur and a lamp maker.
Fields, meadows, clearings and forest pastures are habitats shaped by traditional livestock farming, former pastures or places where food for livestock has been collected for the winter.
Traditionally, they have not been tilled, sown or fertilized, but only mowed and grazed. Nature is often rich: lots of different flowers and other plants and insects.
Lindgren had noticed that the retired farmers in the countryside longed for the beautiful pasture landscapes of the past. They were mourned when they grew up and no one took care of them.
Lindgren realized that he, if anyone, could sell such a service. His promise of service was that there is no object so difficult that he cannot get it grazed and in shape.
“The outlook was disconsolate then. The old traditional pastures just got worse and worse without care.”
Traditional environments, or traditional biotopes, are divided into 42 habitat types, the vast majority of which are extremely endangered. It means that traditional environments with their biological species are in danger of disappearing from Finland's nature.
Mariko Lindgren has only a few horses herself, but on the other hand, the chewing power of one horse in the pasture corresponds to about ten sheep. Lindgren's Finnish horses live on a nearby farm with other horses.
Lindgren's company Satuhaka uses sheep, cows and horses to care for traditional landscapes. All are traditional, too: the horses are Finnish horses, the sheep are Kainun gray and the cows are Eastern Finnish cattle, i.e. kyutts.
“They do the most important work. My job is to be the organizer and pay the bills,” says Lindgren while munching on the sheep.
At its largest, Lindgren had 84 hectares of managed areas, extending as far as Sotkamo and Kaavi. At most, there were nearly a hundred of our own sheep, plus animals purchased from cooperative farms.
But now Lindgren wonders almost daily if he should stop. He is disappointed with the latest twists and turns of the agricultural administration.
So what has happened?
The care allowance is intended to cover the costs of care for the contracted area, but the sheep must also be fed in the winter. The entrepreneur must therefore have other sources of income. Kainuuharmas almost disappeared, but in the 1980s seven rams were saved, with the help of which the stock could be re-established. Mariko Lindgren breeds four of the seven ram lines.
Traditional landscapes endangered nature is cared for with care compensation. To get that, you have to sign a five-year environmental agreement.
Last spring, Lindgren again applied for environmental contracts for pastures that he had managed before and that had been designated as traditional biotopes.
When the areas were inspected in autumn and summer, 16 percent of them were no longer approved.
Nationwide, the situation is similar. Of the areas inspected so far, about 17 percent have been rejected for eligibility. Food Agency informed about it next week. Field inspections are still in progress.
When the area to be managed and the compensation to be received shrinks, the entrepreneur may no longer need to take even approved areas for grazing. This increases the areas left without treatment even more.
Lindgren considers shearing quality time: he gets to focus on spending time with one sheep at a time. In the fall, Lindgren had to work two jobs to get the bills paid, and the fall collection was missed. In the picture, Nasu is curling up.
One one of the largest owners of traditional environments is Metsähallitus, which takes care of state lands. 5,500 hectares of various meadows, fields and forest pastures have been managed on its lands.
Metsähallitus' traditional habitats are usually managed by private agricultural entrepreneurs who bring grazing animals to the beaches, islands or inland pastures. Now contract entrepreneurs have been left out in several places, when it is no longer worth transporting animals to shrinking destinations.
“There are really unfortunate cases where the same place has been taken care of for several decades and perhaps by several generations,” says the special expert of nature conservation Katja Raatikainen Metsähallitus.
“Similarly, sites that are really important in terms of nature values are being left out of care, for example islands that have been cared for for a long time in the National Parks of the Archipelago Sea and Pärä Sea.”
Grounds for rejection to previously grazed areas vary.
Some of the abandoned areas have been too rocky, sandy or otherwise barren. Forested areas have been removed from the forest-meadow mosaics. Inland forest pastures have been pruned if they have resembled too much forest, i.e. there have been too many spruces or spruces.
Lindgren, Raatikainen and many others feel that the reason for the changes is that the Food Agency has itself tightened its interpretations of eligible areas.
“The Agricultural Administration now demarcates areas that, according to it, do not benefit from grazing, but this interpretation of benefit is completely different from that of the environmental administration or the entrepreneurs who have done grazing. Such interpretations do not promote the nurturing of natural diversity,” says Metsähallitus' Raatikainen.
Why are the areas now accepted for maintenance less? The root cause has remained unclear even in the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry.
“There have been attempts to hide why we are in this situation,” says the ministry's special expert Heini Lehtosalo.
According to the ministry, the regulation itself has not changed significantly.
“The marginal conditions are the same as before regarding what kind of objects you can get compensation for.”
So there is to ask the Food Agency's opinion on the matter: why has the number of compensable areas decreased?
“I have not personally analyzed this in any way,” replies the unit manager Hannele Hero.
“We have a full understanding with the country and the Ministry of Forestry that our interpretation is exactly right.”
For the first time, all applied for areas will now be subject to a preliminary inspection, whereas previously only a part of the sites had been subject to ex-post inspection.
“Now we'll see which areas are really eligible,” Sankari explains the shrinking of areas from previous years.
It has also attracted criticism that the Food Agency published its field inspection instructions only one day after the application period for environmental agreements had ended.
Mariko Lindgren wonders where there is good governance and legal protection for entrepreneurs.
“It feels a bit like they hardly got to know it,” says Sankari about the terrain survey instructions that were announced afterwards.
Mariko Lindgren's most important grazer is the skunk. He does not have them himself, but uses the cattle of the cooperative farm.
Finland the goal is to manage around 42,000 hectares of natural pastures and traditional biotopes. For the current season, 31,000 hectares were applied for management, but after field inspections, only a part of these will be accepted.
Sankari says that there was no aim to reduce the surface areas.
“Of course not. But this opportunity has not been lost: it is always possible to renovate the areas that did not pass the inspection, or apply for completely new ones.”
Mariko Lindgren says that she cannot afford to renovate the areas with her own money.
The pasture allowance is intended to cover the costs of grazing. At least it cannot pay for the very expensive establishment of pastures.
For example, according to Lindgren, tens of thousands of euros have gone into fencing the pastures managed in Koli National Park. He received subsidies for that as well, but since at most eight salaried employees worked on the fencing, he also took out a loan for the fencing.
Although Lindgren has not forgotten his goal, he has lost the idea of what his role is in the protection of traditional environments.
Originally, he imagined that he was selling a service for which there is a need. He was a service provider, an entrepreneur. Since then, he has begun to doubt whether he is a volunteer after all.
He works for a salary in Kuopio “to pay for this tradition biotope”.
The last thing that has occurred to Lindgren is whether his role is to be a kind of guardian of traditional environments.
“Should I be satisfied that I even get some compensation for the thing I love?”
Sen Lindgren has now decided that he will not take out any more loans for grazing. He still has real debt.
“Either you have to get a better-paying job to be able to afford this, or you have to quit.”
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