In Finland 13% of the forest area (forest and scrubland), 2.9 million hectares, is protected or in restricted forestry use. Most of this, 2.5 million hectares, is in northern Finland, where the protected areas account for 22% of the forest area. In the south the protected area is about 0.5 million hectares, which is 4% of the forest area in southern Finland. Almost 70% (2.0 million hectares) of the areas that are protected or in restricted forestry use are completely excluded from felling, i.e. under strict conservation. The share of these in the total forest area is about 9%.
(Source: Finnish Forest Research Institute 2008).

The national and natural parks constitute the basic framework of the nature conservation network. From the 1970s until the 1990s the network of nature conservation areas was complemented under several conservation programmes and the Natura 2000 Programme.

The Forest Biodiversity Programme for Southern Finland METSO 2008-2016 aims to halt the degradation of forested habitats and forest species and stabilise a positive trend in biodiversity by 2016. (www.metsonpolku.fi)

There is a varied set of tools available for preserving the biodiversity of commercial forests. Land owners may be eligible for subsidies for maintaining forest biodiversity. One important measure on private lands are the altogether 573 forest nature management projects implemented by the Forestry Centres in 1997-2008. Biodiversity is also preserved by leaving so-called retention trees on regeneration sites. The selection, placement, number and grouping of the retention trees has been about the same since 2002.

Based on the 10th national forest inventory, there is about 5.4 cubic metres of deadwood per hectare, which is very important for forest biodiversity. The amount of deadwood has increased in forest and scrubland southern Finland to an average of 3.2 cubic metres per hectare, while at the end of the 1990s it was only 2.8 cubic metres per hectare. In northern Finland the average amount of decaying wood per hectare is 7.6 cubic metres.
(Source: Finnish Forest Research Institute 2009)

Comments on forest conservation by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry