Wake-up call

When I think about my connection with nature, I also think about waking up to the true state of Finnish nature, the effects of warming, the increasing loss of species and the disappearance of diverse, old-growth forests. Forestry has brought us prosperity, but it has left behind fragmented, species-diverse and relatively young commercial forests. Most of us have never even seen a real, natural forest, so we don't know how to miss one.

I have felt the physical pain and sadness of clear-cutting, and especially of the relentless destruction I have witnessed in the backcountry of Lapland in the slowly growing and recovering northern forests. Fragile nature has been destroyed without hesitation in the vicinity of national parks for a relatively modest return. Perhaps nature will recover one day, or perhaps not, but certainly not in our lifetime. How much longer will it be before even mainstream logging is dimensioned and carried out with the preservation of biodiversity in mind, and not just in terms of the number of cubes of wood that grow on the land? Quantity is no substitute for quality, even if the forest grows well. And when subpopulations of animal and plant species are lost one by one in individual forest plots, the entire species is gradually lost.

I would not have believed it, but I went to the demonstration, the Forest March. And I'm going again.

If I don't chain myself to a tree just yet - but who knows.

We do not own the forest. It owns us.