Logging roads are a necessity

Modern forest management requires a sufficiently dense network of logging roads. The roads are needed not only for the transport of timber, but also for forest management operations carried out after logging. The total length of Finnish logging roads is about 115,000 kilometres, while the total length of public roads is 97,000 kilometres. Assuming that the average width of a logging road is four metres, Finnish logging roads would cover an area of 46,000 hectares – or a square whose side is about 21.5 kilometres in length.

Forestry is not the only user, or even the primary user, of logging roads. On an average, the calculated share of forestry of the use of logging roads subsidised by the state is 40 percent at a minimum. The rest consists of use by those who have a permanent or a leisure home by the road, and of recreational use.

Logging roads and their construction have many benefits and drawbacks. They alter the visual appearance of forest areas and the vegetation in many ways, even away from the immediate vicinity of the road, and they facilitate all use of outlying areas. They also make it easier to fight forest fires. The direct drawbacks are small compared to the indirect ones, but these are difficult to assess. Next to the roads, the existing species will suffer to some extent. The increased traffic in forests may also damage their natural value.

From the intermediate storage sites, timber is transported by trucks, sometimes at long distances, to the mill. The environmental effects of truck transport per ton and kilometre are greater than those of transport by rail or water. To get the timber out of the forest, trucks are needed in any case, and the profitability of transport by rail or water is lessened by the need for intermediate reloading. Nor is transport by water suitable for all timber: certain grades of paper cannot be made of timber floated in the rivers.

10. Volume of long-distance transport of roundwood.

 | Top of page | Back |