Close-to-nature forest management

The Finnish methods of forest management are often said to be close to nature. They do not strive for a natural state, but simulate natural processes with the aim of safeguarding biodiversity and improving it in an appropriate manner. Forest management of this type is sensible, since 'a natural state' is impossible to define, nor is it a permanent state, for nature is in constant change. Moreover, striving after a natural state is not compatible with the appropriate increase of biodiversity. The latter is a sensible goal at least in commercial forests – for traditional practices like slash-and-burn cultivation and pasturing of cattle in forests have also improved biodiversity.

Virgin forests develop in different ways depending on the vegetation zone. In the north, extensive disturbances – the most notable being forest fires – are frequent and an essential element in the rotation of virgin forests. Depending on the site, forest fires occur in northern virgin forests at intervals of 30–120 years; on the other hand, studies indicate that they may be much rarer, even to intervals of more than 300 years. Millions of hectares of forest may burn down each year in the untouched stretches of forest in Canada and Siberia. On the other hand, such disturbances are rare no further away than in Central Europe – not to mention the tropics. The forests in these areas are regenerated by means of death of single trees or small groups of trees.

Adaptation to large-scale disturbances is one reason why northern forests, or generally also boreal forests, are not destroyed by clear-felling. For this reason, virgin forest management in the north not only resorts to clear-felling, but also attempts to simulate natural fire ecology by prescribed burning, by leaving a sufficient amount of timber at various stages of decay in the forest and by safeguarding the proportion of important small-scale habitats and deciduous trees in the forest. Finnish forestry is also based on tree species indigenous to Finland.

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