Protection of forests in Finland

In Finland, national parks and strict nature reserves constitute the basic framework of the nature conservation network. Other areas dedicated to biodiversity conservation include, inter alia, strictly protected zones so called wilderness areas, protected old-growth forests and areas under other conservation programmes, as well as habitats of special importance as defined in the Forest Act.

In total, 2.94 million hectares of forests are protected or under restricted use, which is 13 per cent of the total forest area in Finland. Forest, in this case, refers to forest land and poorly productive forest land, including forested peatlands. Protected forests consist of forests protected by law and biodiversity conservation areas in commercial forests. In total, 2.46 million hectares is protected by law. In addition, there are 0.48 million hectares of biodiversity conservation areas in commercial forests.

The total forest area under strict conservation is 2.27 million hectares, which is 10 per cent of the total forest area. It is a large share in international comparison. Most of the protected forest areas are in Northern Finland, while in the Southern part of the country the share of protected forest areas is much smaller.

Decision on protection of state-owned lands

Metsähallitus gave a proposal to the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry on 11 June 2024 concerning strict protection of about 31,000 hectares of state-owned lands. Most of these are located in Lapland and northern Kainuu. Two sites are located in southern Finland. In the third supplementary budget for 2024, Parliament approved the transfer of about 32,000 of the land property of Metsähallitus from the basic capital to the balance sheet of public administrative duties.

The sites are representative old-growth forests and they are well connected to the existing network of protected areas. Many of the selected sites have been included in earlier processes run with various stakeholders (e.g. protection of old-growth forests in northern Finland) and Metsähallitus has discussed their transfer to statutory protection with them.

The sites used to be included in the network of sites covered by landscape ecological planning, where they have been excluded from commercial operations on a voluntary basis. Some of the sites are large wilderness areas covering several thousands of hectares. The selected sites meet for the most part the criteria for old-growth forests set by the Government Resolution.

Maps for individual sites can be found here:

Protection package Lapland, Ostrobothnia and Kainuu File opens in a new tab pdf 17MB

Protection package southern FinlandFile opens in a new tab pdf 202kB

Surface areas of individual sites in the proposal concerning protection are:

Protection package, surface areasFile opens in a new tab pdf 646kB

Read more Inventory of primary and old-growth forestsLink to an external website (Metsähallitus)

Further information

Ville Schildt, Ministerial Adviser
Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, Natural Resources Department, Metsä- ja biotalousyksikkö Telephone:0295162190 Email Address: firstname.lastname@gov.fi

Protection of forests in Finland

Decision on protection of state-owned lands

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