Forest on Oulujärvi Islands in Finland

Forest on Oulujärvi (the Oulu lake) islands in central Finland, municipality of Vaala, in the border of Northern Ostrobothnia and Kainuu regions

The state-owned pine dominated old-growth forest is planned to be logged by state forestry company Metsahallitus. The islands on the 4th biggest lake in Finland is part of UNESCO Geopark and National Hiking Area and also belong to Natura 2000 network. This forest island was protected as old-growth forest by governmental Metsahallitus in 2001. In 2017 the protection decision was canceled and the forest is now marked for industrial logging.

Finnish state-owned company, Metsähallitus, is planning to log forest areas on the remote islands on Lake Oulujärvi, which were protected as old-growth forests in its Landscape Ecological Plan for the municipality of Vaala. These forests were designated by the company as voluntarily set-aside areas ‘fully outside forest management’, and were intended to ‘complement the [formally] protected and nature sites area network’. Now Metsähallitus has decided to cancel the protected status of these areas, and the first logging notifications have already been made.

Most of the planned logging would also be against the policy set by the Finnish government in 1993 for the recreational forest of Oulujärvi. Article 2 of the State Council Act on establishing the Oulujärvi recreational area states that the ‘Aim of [forestry] activities is the improvement of the recreational environment and preservation of biological diversity’. However, Metsähallitus now intends to carry out industrial logging operations that will fragment most of the forests on the islands. This will clearly not improve them as a recreational environment, let alone conserve biodiversity.