Finnish
state forests are relatively intensively managed in order for Metsähallitus
to fulfil its annual payment target to the state treasury, a target
set annually by the parliament based on Metsähallitus’ own estimates.
Around 90 per cent of Metsähallitus’s income comes from logging,
some of which is causing conflicts of interest in both southern and
northern Finland. In the north (= defined for forestry purposes
as Lapland as well as the adjacent regions of Kainuu and Pohjois-Pohjanmaa)
the biggest concerns are the harmful effects of logging on reindeer
herding, on tourism and travel, and on biodiversity. In southern Finland
current Metsähallitus policy is harmful especially to smaller protected
sites and to prospects for increasing the size of national parks.
Metsähallitus’s operations are too centred on logging for achieving
ecological, social or even overall economic sustainability.
The forest
conservation programme proposed here would in 2003–2010 protect a
total of 500 000 hectares of state forest, of which 350 000 hectares
in northern, and 150 000 hectares in southern Finland. An additional
50 000 hectares would be used in exchange for private lands being
acquired for conservation. In 2011–2020 a further 350 000 hectares
of state forest would be set aside for protection, of which 250 000
in southern Finland and 100 000 further north. Another 50 000 hectares
would be used for exchange purposes also in this period. Alongside
measures in non-state forests, this programme would raise the percentage
of protected forest land to 11, which is in line with ecologists’
estimates of the minimum requirement for the majority of forest species
to retain a favourable conservation status.
With
regard to developing Metsähallitus’s policies, conservation groups
emphasise most the need to lower the annual payment requirement to
the state, as well as changing the decision-making process for
agreeing on this figure. In addition, Metsähallitus should refrain
from logging in areas important for conservation, nature tourism and
recreation, or for reindeer husbandry by the Saami people – the
Saami have had to appeal to the UN Court of Human Rights to save some
of their traditional grazing areas from logging. Decisionmaking on
the use of state land should be better balanced; this would be achieved
by moving Metsähallitus’s nature departments under regional environment
authorities and by increasing regional environment centres’ say in
conservation planning matters concerning state forests.
[Excerpt
from an NGO-publication Palaako elävä metsä?]
