In the negotiations between WWF and Metsähallitus, an agreement has been reached to complement the protection of old-growth forests in Northern Finland. This resolves the controversy that has been lingering since the government resolution on the matter in 1996. The conservation plan drawn up by Metsähallitus in June 2005 has been fine-tuned and specified with the help of additional field data provided by environmental organisations.
The sites jointly defined by WWF and Metsähallitus contain some 55,000 hectares of old-growth forest proper. Metsähallitus is permanently excluding these areas from its felling operations. The sites thus protected were also marked in the Last of the Last maps published by the Taiga Rescue Network in 2000.
This agreement and all previous old-growth forest conservation decisions combined mean that the essential conservation values in the state-owned old-growth forests administered by Metsähallitus have now been assured in this area that has been subject to repeated forest disputes that also attracted international attention.
In Forest Lapland, where the forest conservation rate is already around 40 per cent, Metsähallitus will review the sufficiency of the conservation network and any shortcomings before carrying out site-specific operational planning in fairly natural old-growth forests in commercial forests. The reconciliation of the needs of forestry, reindeer herding and other multiple forest uses will continue by means of natural resource planning and operational planning with stakeholders.
Upper Lapland was not within the scope of this review.
The press release and the backgrounder in English can be found in WWF International's website, and the materials in German as a pdf-file.
In 2006 and early 2007 concern was raised over loggings in Finnish Central Lapland, which is also called Forest Lapland. The position of WWF Finland on the loggings in Finnish Central Lapland can be downloaded as a pdf file (39 kb).