Forest Protection Blog

If they would have been using hemp for there paper this would not be an issue.
We need to start using hemp here, in the USA ...before forest will be in as much dangwer as the forest in Finland.
We need to have manditory reading of the emperior warers no clothes...Once again big business is hurt the entire planet...Hurst created the hemp being illegal so Hurst could destroy our forests.

It is of the utmost importance to end the destruction of rainforests with their unique wildlife habitats. Even if wildlife were not worth preserving for its own sake (which it is) its destruction has implications for the future of the whole earth including humanity. Felling rainforests accelerates global warming, the biggest threat humanity has ever faced.

I don't accept the clearcut logging of any forest, but must comment about the alert about couple of things... Even if the 4,4% sounds like a tiny amount, it is actually quite much. Here is forest everywhere, i mean everywhere. I live about 25 kilometers north from Helsinki (the capital city, if someone doesn't know) in a block of flats and when i look out of my window, i see forest. Almost enough to get lost for a while, actually. And i have an understanding that it is still written in the law that it is illegal to destroy forest, of course that only means that whoever is logging must make sure, perhaps even by planting new trees, that the forest will grow back. It takes time of course, but forests are not being totally destroyed, it just looks awful when a bigger area is been cut clear. I remember even reading that the forests are growing faster than they are being cut, but i'm not 100% sure about that. Anyway, just thought to tell that Finnish forests are not a thing to panic about, but instead the government should perhaps be told that they should not continue building nuclear power plants...

All governments need to initiate state run reafforestation programmes whereby young people can learn new skills in horticultural activities, but purely devoted to reafforestation of run down areas - Companies that destroy the environment should now be accountable in a way that smokers have had to be - that is if you hurt others then you are accountable - big fines or litigation should be possible in the near future against the aggressors - otherwise companies will have to act responsibly by funding these government sponsored training programmes for the young workers - to rehabilitate the damaged forests

your blog is crap because it vets free speech and is stacked in favour of the conservatives
Blah blah

Here is a copy of my mail to John Terborgh, who sent me the info and asked how all this is possible in a civilized country like Finland. In every conflict, it does not hurt to understand the other side, but I frankly deeply disliked some of your formulations. I would have expected a text like that from my 16 yrs old daughter but not from grown ups. Demonizing the other part does not serve any useful purpose at all.

hoping for better formulations next time,

Lauri Oksanen

******copy of my letter***

Hi,

The information you have got is completely correct, and it would indeed be a good thing if you supported the action. I have. The only thing I dislike is some of the tune, though I would have expressed myself the same way in younger days.

The whole issue has nothing to do with economy, and it is not true that the forest govt. had not paid attention to the protection of northern forests. A big fraction of Finnish Lapland's taiga is protected as national parks (the areas surrounded by red lines in the attached map). There are additional areas with quite stiff restrictions, though it is indeed arguable if there is such a thing as environmental forestry. The whole thing focuses on the area around Lake Inari (circeld with black), with fairly well growing pine forests.

The opinion of older forestry folks (who are still in charge) is that when upper Lapland was divided to national parks and forest production areas, a deal was made. They stuck to their part but nature protection folks want to have the whole area. This is of course a very obsolete position. Things change, so do values, and new situations require reconsideration of old priorities. But this is a hard thing for many folks.

The sad thing is that there is not a penny at stake. Forestry in upper Lapland is heavily subsidized by tax money. This is the only part of Finland which is off limits for modern forestry machines; only chain saws are allowed. The purpose: to provide jobs for locals. The net yield in ? is negative. Even the gross annual economic yield is at the same order of magnitude as the yield of reindeer husbandry (which suffers from forestry). Tourism has long ago bypassed both reindeer husbandry and forestry as a source of income in this area, and the impact of forestry on tourism is easy to guess. But folks live in the past and do not see. This does not refer just to Finland's forestry govt. (Metsähallitus) The leaders of the munincipality are strongly in favor of forestry - against their own interest. When reindeer owners called in Greenpeace, a local boycott against eating reindeer meat emerged. Of course nationalities count. Most reindeer herders are Sámi, all loggers are Finns. This municipality has a Finnish majority, bosses are Finns.

On the background there is a much deeper rift of attitudes which I know very well (my father was a forester). This country has forever lived of forests one way or another - furbearer hunting and trapping, shifting agriculture, tar burning, saw timber production and then pulp production. It is a totally new thing - first time since the Roman iron age - that less than 50% of the Finish export comes from forests. That was "King Jorma"s (Nokia's J. Ollila) great feat, and he has actually been preaching modernization of Finnish attitudes towards forestry.

For my father's and granpa's (who ran various kinds of sawmills and carpentry factories) generations, forest was the main resource to be used. Prudently and sustainably, yes, and so that there was place for taiga's wildlife and wild plants, but surely used. An unused forest was something they very deeply disliked. They were both totally negative towards the very idea of having national parks; for them that was just a stupid fad, created by urban Americans and Germans, whose life was based on rich cropfields in favorable southern areas. They (and their generation) repeatedly told me (and my generation) that there is just one country where the majority of people live in a climate corresponding to Labrador, and that country is Finland. Southerners just have no idea of what that takes and should better shut up when it comes to use and protection of the Finnish taiga.

The doctrine of prudent use, combined with care, was ruined in the post war Finland, which faced the gigantic challenge to resettle Karelians (16% of the population), driven awy from their land, to pay huge "war repairs" to uncle Joe (Stalin), and to lift the population from poverty. On all levels (forestry govt., companies...) that task was tackled by shifting the army system to civilian jobs. Ranks in company hierarchies pretty much corresponded the ranks that the guys had had in the army. I know several cases where company executives actively tried to get in reserve trainings in order to advandce in army ranks and, thus, to be eligible to higher positions in the company. A captain just did not boss over a mayor. In this "civilian army" there was also a strict requirement of shared ideology - forests were the resource to save the nation, no other concerns were allowed. At that point, my dad was happy to move to a teaching position. although he never learned to like "uncared" (primeval) forests, he did not like the ruthless, mechanized forestry, either.

The current generation of leading forestry folks still represent this "army of foresters" - only folks sharing these attitudes were recruited. On their maps, every national park marks a defeat to these "goddam milkbeard radical communists" which emerged as their main opponents in the late 1960's. (There is a point: I and many in my generation were totally naive about communism and the USSR, and we did provoke them unnecessarily by totally ignoring the toughness of the challenges they had faced first in the war and then in the late 1940's and early 1950's.) In Inari, they feel that they are are pushed to their last line of defense, and from that a soldier only departs boots first. In this fight, they even have on their side those, who represent the old "use prudently" school. For this group, the forestry practiced around Lake Inari is the last remnant of prudence in a country which has otherwise been split to "timber farms" and "tree rotteries". That the chain saw forestry has l
ong ago ceased to be profitable seems not to be a concern form them - they feel that they are protecting a threatened culture.

In this issue I am totally on the side of the nature protection folks and reindeer herdsmen, but it does not hurt to have an insight in the complexities of the problem. This is definitely not a clash between economical and environmental interests. It's all about cultures.

best,
Lauri

Lauri Oksanen, Professor in Plant Ecology
Section of Ecology, Department of Biology
University of Turku
FI-20014 Turku, Finland

The Destruction needs to end now to all Global Warming Causes!!! The Rain Forest was Gods rendition of Our own Survival. All acts of Destruction Has to Stop Here!!
We need to come together as one Global Nation and stop Green House Gases.

May God Bless Us All !