Lappeenranta’s data centre logging prompts conservation group to seek investigation

Lappeenranta cleared forest for a planned data centre, but a regional conservation group says the logging destroyed flying squirrel routes and is preparing a request for a police investigation. The city says it followed the rules, Yle reports.

The South Karelia Nature Conservation District says the logging in Pajarila, about five kilometres from Lappeenranta city centre, was illegal. The city cleared the forest in late winter to prepare a plot for a data centre by Polarnode.

The group says the forest was part of the flying squirrels’ habitat and a route to other forest areas, and that the logging has destroyed it. The city disputes that account.

On March 31, the city announced the data centre investment and said it would preserve a large forest area around the facility as a route for flying squirrels. In April, people concerned about logging in the forest contacted the conservation district.

On April 15, Juha Juuti, an activist with the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation, asked the city to stop the work immediately. He cited nature protection law, an EU directive and statements issued in 2022 by the regional authority and the city that stressed the importance of flying squirrel routes. The city replied that the logging complied with guidance and zoning regulations, and that the work could not be stopped because it was already complete.

A week after Juuti’s request, he and district chair Kimmo Saarinen inspected the cleared area. They said the routes had been reduced to strips only a couple of metres wide, while experts recommend widths of 40 to 50 metres in comparable places. Juuti also said that nearly all the trees on one route were dead or damaged by bark beetles and likely to die, meaning the corridor would disappear in the near future.

The conservation district also criticised the felling of large aspens, which it says are important feeding trees for flying squirrels, alongside birch and alder.

City architect Maarit Pimiä said the logging complied with the valid detailed plan and building permit. The city had carried out additional surveys of flying squirrel habitat before the work, including a visit by biologists from the Licensing and Supervisory Agency.

Pimiä said the cleared land had previously been used for agriculture and forestry and that the trees there were not important for flying squirrel movement. She said the species’ key habitat, breeding and resting places, and routes are outside the logged area and were accounted for in both the detailed plan and the logging.

The conservation district is preparing a request for a police investigation into the logging.