The Siberian Jay - a pawn in the fight to protect Finnish forests
Copyright 2000
Helsingin Sanomat
December 12, 2000
By Pentti Laitinen
For the past three weeks, logging work by the holder of the state forests, the Forest and Park Service (FPS, or Metsähallitus in Finnish), has been halted at a site in Southern Central Finland at the request of nature organisations. The logging site is situated in the Riponeva area in the municipality of Virrat, west from Jyväskylä.
It was the local bird experts who originally wanted to protect the Siberian jays in the area, but when national nature conservancy NGOs moved in, the logging debate took on a forest policy dimension.
By the end of November the misty landscape of the Riponeva area is covered with about 5 centimetres of patchy snow. On the eastern side of the forest road is a clearing in which the harvesting of timber has stopped dead in its tracks.
The FPS had planned on transferring the logging operation to a stand on the western side of the road, but over there a net containing tallow balls can be seen hanging from one of the trees. It is clearly visible from the road. The bird supporters had moved it there from the forest on the eastern side, which originally should have been the side of the road to cut first. Tallow just happens to be a staple for the Siberian jay (Perisoreus infaustus).
The debate concerns the 80- to 90-year-old spruces in the Riponeva forest stands. Forest managers look at them as material ripe for cutting. Protectionists find the wood valuable as it provides nesting sites for threatened bird species.
The FPS does not consider this stand to be an old-growth forest that needs protection, and underlines the fact that the Siberian jay is not an endangered species. The Forest and Park Service has already logged half of their planned 58-hectare site in Riponeva, and they also argue that this area was thinned without any fuss in 1973 and again in 1988.
The local manager for the Forest and Park Service states that he has once seen two Siberian jays in the Riponeva woods at the same time. Bird enthusiasts from the area claim that there are two pairs in the woods, one of them nesting here. The Siberian jay has a large territory, and hence it has been seen living in very different types of forest. Mild winters in Southern Finland have interfered with nesting, and the Siberian jay is pretty close to the edge of its habitat here.
Willingly or not, the fringe-living Siberian jays of Virrat have become pawns in the game of forest policy and the local celebs of environmental lobbyists.
Kirsi-Marja Korhonen, Environment Manager at Metsähallitus, explains that the FPS has recently charted out the nature areas and placed 123,000 hectares of forest under protection. In addition 200,000 hectares are to be subjected to longer turnover times, which means that the average age of the tree stand's growth will be increased 1.5 to 1.7 times.
Korhonen says that previously such disputes as this have been resolved amicably enough at the local level. An assay was carried out here some years back, and the requests of local ornithologists concerning birds of prey were accommodated. She argues that this site has suddenly become a kind of test-case for forestry protection and forest certification issues in the southern half of the country.
Korhonen says that whilst she has no objection to enthusiasts encouraging Siberian jays to settle on what is one of the edges of their usual habitat, she is a little puzzled by the fact that it had to be done just in the place where the loggers were headed.
Korhonen believes that it is wrong to claim - as some have done - that the government is hoarding the timber earnings for itself. Over half goes to contractors and timber transporters, to whom forest management is of vital importance.
According to Matti Liimatainen, forest campaigner for the Finnish Nature League, there is more to the Virrat forest case, namely how to improve protection in Southern Finland. "The need to protect old forests is shown in part by the fact that regionally threatened birds, birds that favour the old-growth forests such as the Siberian jay, have been seen in the Virrat woods", he says.
The Nature League, in their recent English-language releases on the matter (see below), has described the Virrat forest as a "valuable old forest" and Siberian jays as birds that "live in old-growth forests in the Northern taiga".
The FPS, however, begs to differ. It does not consider the Virrat stands to be valuable old forest.
Timo Tanninen of WWF Finland does not want to take a side on the natural state of the Virrat forest and claims that likewise the WWF has kept a neutral stance on the matter.
All the same, Harri Karjalainen, forestry director of the Finnish WWF, has given the WWF international sister organisation permission to use the Nature League's terminology. WWF usually only spreads information that its own international organisation has personally sought out and inspected.
According to Timo Tanninen, the WWF has played an active role especially in the preparatory work on Southern Finnish forest protection. Tanninen says that the Virrat case also touches on the vexed issue of forest certification. The WWF promotes FSC certifications, a favourite with nature protectionists. He believes that the new PEFC-certification, embraced by industry and forest owners, does not take into consideration threatened species to the degree that the timber harvested would be considered deserving of an eco-stamp.
Around 1,500 species are nationally classified as endangered, and a further 1,060 species come into the category of "under supervision" with the Siberian Jay included in this group.
The classifications of "endangered", "under supervision" and "regionally threatened" need precision. Pertti Rassi, a spokesman for the Ministry of the Environment and chairman of the team working on endangered species, believes that the different classifications are perhaps used side-by-side on purpose.
Earlier, species considered "under supervision" used to be considered endangered or at least nearly threatened, but these days they are not. The content of the class "regionally threatened" will have to be made more precise.
"The overall situation for the Siberian jay in this country is good. During the last inspection covering the past 10 years, figures showed that the population of the species has not decreased", says Rassi.
"With our current resources it is not possible to give special protection to the birds living on the fringes of its viable habitat. The matter should be taken care of in a plan for general nature protection or for land use", says Rassi.
Rassi also believes there are better excuses to protect forests than the Siberian jay. It is not an "umbrella species" like the white-backed woodpecker (Dendrocopos leucotos), in whose habitat other endangered species are often to be found.