Biologist says Finland targets the wrong forests for protection

Finland plans to protect 26,400 hectares of old forest, but the areas are concentrated in regions that already have extensive protection, research professor Panu Halme says. Yle visited one of the forests proposed for protection in Suomussalmi.

The Itäkangas forest contains large living trees, standing deadwood and many fallen, decaying trees. It is managed by Metsähallitus, the state forestry organisation, and meets the government’s strict criteria for old and natural forest.

Environmental organisations have criticised the criteria as “fairy forest criteria” because they are so demanding. Metsähallitus found areas meeting them mainly in Kainuu and Lapland. In most parts of Finland, the review of state forests found little or no forest eligible for protection.

Halme, a research professor at the Finnish Environment Institute, says protecting these areas is not the most cost-effective approach.

“If biologists had been asked to protect the same number of trees, we would not have arrived at this solution,” he says.

Finland has promised the European Union that it will protect its remaining old and natural forests. The government’s criteria are based mainly on forest age and the amount of deadwood, although other characteristics are also considered.

Metsähallitus has proposed protecting 2,400 hectares in the Ostrobothnia-Kainuu region, 23,000 hectares in Lapland excluding the Sámi area, and 1,000 hectares in southern Finland. The Sámi area has not yet been reviewed. Metsähallitus also plans to add around 10,000 hectares of smaller forest areas to its regional ecological network.

Halme says forest nature varies across Finland. Without new protected areas in southern Finland, threatened forest species will inevitably become extinct, he estimates. Their populations cannot move 500 kilometres to protected areas in the north.

He says it would have been more sensible to expand existing protected areas and create connections between them.

The Itäkangas forest has been proposed as a 103-hectare protected area. Its sections are different ages, but the forest is on average as much as 160 years old. It contains an average of 30 to 40 cubic metres of deadwood per hectare, with some areas reaching 51 cubic metres.

Ilkka Herukka, planning manager for Metsähallitus’s forestry subsidiary in the Ostrobothnia-Kainuu region, says Itäkangas may be more representative of old and natural forest than average. It is somewhat older and more natural than most of the forests in his area that met the protection criteria.

However, Herukka says the forest is not exceptionally old for its latitude. During the inventory, Metsähallitus found forests that were even closer to their natural state, with more large fallen trees and fewer stumps and other signs of human activity.

Stumps from logging believed to have taken place in the 1960s can also be seen in Itäkangas. Such traces are typical, and did not prevent the forest from being proposed for protection. Very few Finnish forests have no signs of human activity.

Itäkangas can be reached easily by a wide forest road, and berry pickers apparently visit the area. Highway 5 runs close by, and traffic can be heard from inside the forest.