The Finnish Forest Association has launched its new forest.fi-website. The most significant elements on the site are the news service and an information package called Forest Facts. The website will be published both in English and Finnish.
The Forest Facts -portion of the forest.fi gives a clear and understandable picture of forest sector in Finland. It consists of short pieces of texts with links to graphics and other kinds of presentations. Forest Facts functions also as a a gateway to the Finnish forest sector and even more:
those searching additional information are guided to relevant websites, may they then be in the forest sector or not.
The news service in forest.fi tells about news dealing with the forest sector. The articles are written according to good journalistic principles:
also views that are critical to the forest sector will be published. First of all, the aim is to tell about things that other media does not. This is why the news in Finnish and English are not necessarily the same.
Today the news in forest.fi tell among other things that
- Finnish Minister of Agriculture and Forestry. Mr. Juha Korkeaoja, hopes that the campaigning of Greenpeace in Upper Lapland doesn't harm the work for biodiversity in Finland
- The Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Environment in Finland, Mrs. Sirkka Hautojärvi says, that the new and voluntary ways for safeguarding the biodiversity in the forests of Southern Finland are not only more effective but also faster than the traditional ways to protect forests.
You'll find the website here: www.forest.fi. The responsible body of the contents of the website is Finnish Forest Association.
Finland´s forest cover is extensive and continuous
86 percent of Finland´s land area is forested. Forests are mainly owned by ordinary Finnish families, but the holdings are small and their borders are not visible in the nature. The settlements and agricultural areas form only patches in a continuous forest landscape. Open agricultural landscapes can be seen only in Ostrobothnia and South-Western Finland.
Roughly two per cent of commercial forests are harvested annually. Half of that are thinnings and the rest is felled for regeneration. The average area of felling for regeneration is less than two hectares. Nearly all Finns live within 50 kilometres distance from strictly protected forests.