Climate change sends wild boar north and ticks by mail

Climate change and biodiversity loss are increasingly visible in everyday life across Finland, Yle reports, from wild boar sightings north of the Arctic Circle to unusually low water levels and researchers receiving letters full of ticks.

The changes are also affecting science, art, human and animal wellbeing, and the natural environment. Yle has compiled unusual events reported from different parts of Finland during the summer that are partly linked to climate change.

Wild boar reaches Lapland

A wild boar sighting more than 100 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle was unprecedented, but may not remain so for long.

Wild boar are most common in the border regions of southeastern Finland. Because the animals struggle to move through deep snow, milder winters are allowing them to venture further north.

This happened during the summer when a large wild boar was spotted near the border between Kittilä and Rovaniemi. Hunter Pertti Helppikangas later killed the roughly 100-kilogram animal. He initially did not believe reports that a wild boar had been seen there.

Low water levels expose a route to an island

Water levels in Lake Pielinen, Finland’s fourth-largest lake, fell so low that people could walk to Kaiskunniemi, an island in the middle of the lake, without getting their feet wet.

Hydrologist Sami Soosalu of the Finnish Environment Institute told Yle that the situation was linked to drought in autumn 2024 and the low amount of snow last winter.

The catchment area of Lake Pielinen had not experienced such a snow-poor winter in more than 60 years. Soosalu said a similar water situation nevertheless occurs approximately once every 15 years.

Researchers receive letters filled with ticks

The University of Turku has asked people to send ticks to the university by post, either alive or dead.

People across Finland responded actively. On the busiest days, researchers received hundreds of letters containing ticks.

The collection is being used to map the spread of ticks, which is being encouraged by climate change. The previous collection was organised in 2015.

Another example is the spread of a plant disease known in Finnish as mustikanlaikkupikari, which affects blueberry crops. The disease has reached a wide area of Finland and can significantly reduce berry yields in some places.

The northernmost observation of the disease was recorded in Ranua in summer 2025. The spruce-damaging European spruce bark beetle has also been found widely, with risk thresholds exceeded in several parts of Finland.

Climate coverage has declined

Climate crisis coverage in Finland tends to peak during hot summers and major climate conferences, said Erkki Mervaala, a senior researcher at the Finnish Environment Institute.

Mervaala has analysed climate reporting in the newspapers Helsingin Sanomat and Ilta-Sanomat during the 2000s as part of his doctoral research. Coverage reached its highest level in 2021, around the climate conference in Glasgow, and has declined in Finnish media since then.

News reports also often present climate change as a series of individual events. Mervaala said it was useful to make the crisis visible at a local level, but that the media should also connect individual phenomena to the broader trend, even if only in one sentence.

“It is by no means self-evident that people in Finland see the connection between, for example, the huge heatwaves in Europe and the progression of climate change,” Mervaala said.

Climate change overtook economic growth as a subject in news coverage in 2018. That year, Greta Thunberg and her school strike became a global phenomenon, the United Nations climate panel IPCC published a strongly worded major report, and a hot summer broke records.

Drought creates pressure to save water

Abundant water and water shortages are opposite extreme conditions associated with the climate crisis, and they are not distributed evenly across Finland.

Eastern Finland has been particularly affected by drought this summer. In May, an animal shelter had to receive drinking water by tanker after its well dried up.

Residents of Joroinen were urged to join a water-saving effort in April.