An FFCS
certificate is issued for a Forestry Centre as a whole (see
map). Thus, in this report the forest holdings researched are
grouped under the name of the Forestry Centre they belong to.
The target
areas that have been surveyed as the case studies in Lapland and in
Kainuu as well as the cases 1 and 2 in North Karelia are state-owned
old-growth forests, which have been inventoried and considered valuable
by environmental NGOs already some years ago. Many of these sites
have also been inventoried by the Forest and Park Service during the
preparation of the old-growth forest protection program or as a part
of their landscape ecological planning. The locations of these forest
sites have been published twice: as national old-growth forest maps
by Finnish environmental NGOs in January 1998, and in the "Last
of The Last" -maps by the Taiga Rescue Network (TRN) in May
2000.
The other
case studies have been found in later forest inventories performed
by Finnish environmental NGOs (by the Finnish Association for Nature
Conservation and its regional associations, by ornithological associations
and by the Finnish Nature League). Some of the sites are included
in the "Implementation of Natura 2000" report by WWF Finland.
The report was given to the Ministry of the Environment in March 2000.
In the
majority of the forest holdings, the forests in question have been
logged, or have been included in logging plans, after the issuing
of the FFCS certificate. The information concerning the logging plans
has been collected by the authors of this report by visiting forestry
authorities and officials. In this report there are also some cases,
where the logging has been conducted a maximum six months before the
certificate was issued. These examples are nonetheless relevant, since
the forest management of the Forestry Centre must be in compliance
with the FFCS criteria already during the preparation, training and
auditing phase. Issuing of the certificate cannot depend only on the
expectations of future practices.
There
are two main findings resulting from the research done: the FFCS/PEFC
allows management practices that are detrimental to old-growth forests
or other forests of high conservation value, or the authors of this
report consider the logging practices a violation of one or several
of the FFCS criteria.
The reported
cases have been marked on the map.
For high-resolution
photographs suitable for media use, please see the
Media page.
