The Forest
and Park Service (FPS) and a group of Lappish reindeer herdsmen have
clashed once again. The FPS intends to log the area between the Hammastunturi
wilderness area and Menesjärvi. The reindeer herdsmen’s cooperative
is opposed to this as the felling of forests containing beard lichen
will reduce the amount of food available to the reindeer.
The situation
is the same as it has been many times in the past. The FPS feels it
has negotiated with the reindeer herdsmen with regard to the details
of the project, while the herdsmen feel that the luke-warm contacts
made by the FPS can hardly be called genuine negotiation.
"The
FPS’s employees spread a finished map out before us. We are only allowed
to decide where the logging will start, and what will be left out,"
complains reindeer herdsman Petri Mattus.
"It
is the same as asking a condemned man to choose between the gas chamber,
hanging or the electric chair. We have not received a logging map
covering the next few years."
As all
other reindeer, the reindeer belonging to Mattus’s reindeer herdsmen’s
cooperative eat beard lichen, which grows attached to trees. The cooperative
now has only two large intact tracts of forest containing beard lichen
left. The area the FPS intends to log - covering several dozen hectares
- is the larger of these areas.
The FPS
intends to start logging in the beginning of February. The reindeer
herdsmen have called on the FPS to stop loggings and site preparations
in the area altogether.
Mattus
says that the FPS was supposed to cease logging even previously logged
areas for at least 20 years, in order to enable the old logging residue
to rot, and a young stand three to four metres in height to develop.
This would prevent hardening of the snow. It takes at least 150 years
for trees carrying beard lichen to grow.
Over
4,000 hectares have already been logged in the reindeer herdsmen’s
cooperative’s area.
According
to the FPS’s classification, the Tiivivaara, Menesmukanvaara and Kynsileikkaamaniemi
areas are managed (commercial) forests. Pertti Veijola, head of the
FPS’s Northern Lapland District for Wilderness Management, says that
field personnel do not have the authority to cease cutting.
"We
are obliged to do a lot of work to ensure that the State’s basic forestry
mechanism keeps running, and that its beneficial effect on employment
is safeguarded."
"Aren’t
our jobs important, then?" queries Mattus. "Providing reindeer
with a diet supplement costs money."
Pekka
Aikio, president of the Sami Court, criticises the FPS’s way of negotiating.
Aikio
feels that in everyday language "negotiating" means an equal-sided
discussion, the result of which is not a foregone conclusion. There
has been no negotiation now.
"Reindeer
husbandry in Lapland is clearly cast in the role of the cry of a pauper"
says Aikio. Negotiations with the Sami Court can only concern projects
that will have a major adverse effect on the Sami people.
"It
has now been proposed that even "slight major harm" should
not be caused to Sami livelihoods without listening to what they have
to say. The way this has been formulated has horrified the municipalities
in the Sami region," relates Aikio.
A petition
against the intention to log is circulating. Environmental activists
and summer house owners feel the area should be spared due to the
presence of large numbers of capercaillies having their lekking sites
in untouched old growth forests. Three rare species of bracket fungi
have also been discovered in the affected area.
The FPS’s
opponents consider that the FPS’s Northern Lapland District for Wilderness
Management’s logging intentions and profit targets should be scaled
down. In defence, Veijola points out that the FPS is not logging due
to profit targets. "It is our social duty to practice forestry."
