Forest biodiversity
Biodiversity is the basis of sustainable forestry
Healthy forests are crucial for the forest industry. The most important means to promote biodiversity are the nature management of commercial forests and the protection of the most valuable areas for biodiversity.
Download the roadmap for more biodiverse forests from here.
The forest industry takes care of biodiversity
In forestry, volunteer actions aimed at protecting biodiversity and curbing the growth of the number of endangered species play a significant role.
Nature management is part of everyday forestry in Finland
Biodiversity is promoted in practice through the nature management of commercial forests and by protecting areas especially valuable for biodiversity, such as luxuriant herb-rich forest patches where the diversity of species is considerable.
Forest certification promotes the sustainable use of forests, in which nature management is part of day-to-day operations in forestry. Saving retention trees and decaying wood as well as buffer zones of water systems are examples of nature management practices that have become established due to certification. A total of 93% of Finnish commercial forests are certified.
Various means are needed to safeguard biodiversity
Various means are required to protect forest biodiversity. These include choosing adequate forest management methods for different forests and building mosaics of different aged and structured forests.
Different joint research and development projects in the sector are also important to further improve the means to safeguard biodiversity. The Finnish Forest Industries Federation has launched, for example, the Grove manage-ment action programme and the More decaying wood for commercial forests programme.
Studies have shown that the nature management measures are effective and have positive impacts on biodiversity. However, some of the impacts are visible in forest nature only in the long term, especially among the most endangered species. Active cooperation for the benefit of biodiversity continues.
Biodiversity is the basis of sustainable forestry. This summary brings together
key issues for acts on diversity.
Nature and environment
