Olli Manninen, Finnish Nature League, Finland
"Rule number one in any ecological restoration should be:
do not take wood out of the forest."
Ecological restoration in Finland’s forests involves, amongst other things, blowing trees up with dynamite to create more dead wood, and logging trees from peatlands where they do not belong. There are concerns, however, that forest restoration is used by industry as an excuse to argue against the need for forest conservation.
In the southern two-thirds of Finland less than 2% of forest land is protected, in vast areas less than 1%. Practically all the forests that are not protected are under very heavy and intensive forestry use. For forest biodiversity even worse news is that many of the protected areas are not old-growth and are not yet able to support endangered forest species because of their earlier forestry use. Because of the severe biodiversity crisis in our forests there is tremendous need for a major new forest protection programme and other actions to restore the forests to a more natural state.
In restoring forests in Finland there are two main goals: increasing the amount of dead wood, and restoring the natural tree composition.
In many former commercial forests that are now part of protected areas, the tree composition is a monoculture and the amount of dead wood is minimal. In old, single-age spruce forests, restoration is simply done by felling or killing some of the trees. The cheapest and easiest way is just to saw some of the trees down and leave them to decay. The disadvantage of this method is the sawed surface of the trunk and the stump: many national park visitors understandably do not like to see this. Also, for many endangered species dependent on dead wood, sawed trunks are not as suitable as fallen trunks that maintain a root connection.
The best way found so far is to push trees down with a tractor or harvester. This looks much like a windfall and produces good wood material for many of the old-growth forest species.
Some experiments have also been done with dynamite, which if exploded 2–5 m up the tree produces both a tall stump and a trunk with splintered wood. These types of dead wood material are useful for some old-growth forest species. Unfortunately (or perhaps not!) using dynamite is very expensive, at least in a highly regulated country such as Finland, so dynamite restoration cannot be done on a large scale.
To produce dead standing trees, the bark can also be removed from a 20 cm-wide ring around the tree. Such ring-barking is easily done with an axe or a billhook, even by volunteers.
In large areas of Finland, and also within some national parks, young, monoculture pine plantations are dominant. Pine has been planted in many cases into forest habitats where it naturally would not live at all. For example, in the Nuuksio National Park there are hundreds of ha of dense 30-year-old pine plantations in habitats that normally would be dominated by spruce and broad-leaved trees.
In order to ‘correct’ the situation and to help natural processes of forest regeneration, openings are being created in the forest by sawing down trees from small plots, typically 20 m in diameter, so that broad-leaved trees and spruces will occupy the plots and the forest structure will gradually become more diverse and natural. The dead trunks left lying also contribute to forest biodiversity. It will be a very long time before these forests will become old-growth, but restoration work definitely helps in this process.
As forest restoration becomes more common, clear rules are needed, and rule number one in anything calling itself ecological restoration should be: do not take wood out of the forest.
Peatland restoration is rather different, and has been going on in Finland since the 1980s. It is needed because of the tragic and extensive draining programme carried out since the 1950s. Most of the peatlands in southern Finland were drained in order to increase timber growth and many peatland habitats have become rare. Restoration is done by filling ditches and removing trees and bushes. In many cases the trees have been sold in order to cover the costs of the restoration. This is usually an ecologically sound way to support the process of peatland recovery but an even better approach, ecologically, would be to move the woody material to nearby forests.
All in all, ecological forest restoration activities in Finland have so far been carried out on about 3000 ha, and peatland restoration on almost 9000 ha. This has mainly been in national parks, such as Nuuksio, Liesjärvi and Seitseminen, and in the peatland reserves of northern Ostrobothnia and south-western Finland.
In future, the land and money used applied to restoration will increase, and there is a clear need for restoration of tens of thousands of ha of forest and even larger areas of peatlands. Metsähallitus (the state forest and park service) and the ministries seem very eager at the moment to increase the amount of ecological restoration. Restoration is a good way to employ unemployed loggers, so it has social benefits too.
The biggest problem with ecological restoration in Finland is that the forestry sector is using it in the media as an excuse to undermine the need for forest protection. Restoration, certification, leaving key biotopes and residual trees and so forth, are all repeatedly being presented as alternatives to more forest protection. Burning forest ground after a clearcut is also falsely advertised as ecological forest restoration. Ironically, therefore, some things that are carried out in forests, which are in themselves useful and supportable, are making it more difficult for environmental NGOs to campaign for actual forest conservation.
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