Campaign for the Southern Finland's Forests

We the undersigned require that by 2010 Finland raise the amount of protected forest in South Finland, as well as that of poorly protected parts of the country's northernmost regions Oulu and Lapland, to five per cent, and in the longer term to ten per cent, of the country's forested land.

You can also sign this petition at: http://www.metsavetoomus.fi/en/sign/index.html


Finland's forests and forest landscapes have been impoverished by intensive commercial forestry to a degree that has affected every Finn's experience of the natural world. Forests have become younger, their tree composition varies little, and once even common forest species have become rare.

New nature reserves are urgently needed to preserve Finland's naturally occurring forest biodiversity. Creating these reserves would also ensure that citizens in all parts of the country would have access to the natural forests they now miss. Around 1500 km2 of forest is clearcut annually in Finland; this needs to be balanced by increased protection, as well as more widespread use of environmentally benign forestry methods in commercial stands.

Currently only around two per cent of forests are protected in the region covering all the provinces of South Finland, Pohjanmaa, SW Kainuu, and SW Lapland. The majority of additional forest nature reserves can be realised through protecting government, municipal, and company-owned commercial forests and restoring them to more natural conditions. It is important to achieve larger protected entities, which also have the greatest recreational potential. Protection of privately-owned forests will require the Finnish parliament to approve new financing instruments with which to compensate landowners.

Finland’s forests are among the most intensively managed in the world.

Finland has some 20 million hectares of forests. Only about 4,1 % of the forest area is protected. In the southernmost Finland only some one percent of forests are protected. The Finnish forest management model has resulted in the rapid conversion of natural forests into monotonous industrial forests that lack many key features of boreal forest ecosystems.

Forestry is the most serious threat to species survival in Finland. Unless there is a significant increase in the amount of protected forest area and a parallel improvement in the standards of forest management, hundreds of species face extinction within the next 50 years.

Sustainable development and protection of biodiversity are now popular phrases in the public communications of the Finnish forestry sector. But there remains a huge gap between rhetoric and reality.