The UK government's freshly watered down timber buying guidelines will give the green light to destroying old-growth Finnish forests, threatening to wipe out a number of internationally recognised rare and threatened species, according to Greenpeace.
Posted by admin — 16 June 2005 at 8:00am
-
Comments
Metsähallitus, the Finnish state-owned logging company, has unilaterally terminated all negotiations with the Sami reindeer herding co-operatives and has said that the logging moratorium on 90,000 hectares of important reindeer grazing forests is over. Logging could restart as early as August.
Posted by admin — 25 April 2005 at 8:00am
-
Comments
In May Greenpeace closed our Forest Rescue Station (FRS) located at Inari, Lapland, having achieved our objective of temporarily ending logging on valuable forest lands and in anticipation of talks on the future of the forests that were scheduled for June.
Greenpeace activists in Rome today appealed to the Finnish Prime Minister to save the Sàmi reindeer forests in Northern Finland . The activists unfurled a banner - Stop Trashing Sàmi Reindeer Forests - at the UN headquarters of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Wood chips were deposited in front of the building to highlight the fact that the Finnish government is turning the reindeer forests into wood chips for pulp and paper production.
Angeli, Finland. 15 March 2005 Today, as local reindeer herders and Greenpeace activists defended the forest rights of indigenous Sàmi people in Arctic Lapland, the Finnish Minister for Foreign Affairs was busy abroad painting a rosy picture of Finland's human rights policy. Campaigners placed demarcation signs in an area of winter reindeer grazing forest important for the Muotkatunturi co-operative in Angeli, northern Lapland.
Greenpeace today (2nd March) announced that it would be stepping up its campaign to protect remaining ancient forests in Finland by establishing a Forest Rescue Station in the last Sàmi reindeer forests of Arctic Lapland. This follows the Finnish government's decision to start new logging operations in important winter grazing pine forests, in defiance of urgent recommendations issued by the UN Human Rights Committee (1).
Posted by admin — 2 March 2005 at 9:00am
-
Comments
A group of Europen writers have arrived at our Forest Rescue Station, situated 300 kilometres norh of the Arctic Circle in northern Finland, to see for themselves the effect of relentless logging on the last Sàmi reindeer forests. The Sàmi are indigenous reindeer herders who rely on Lapland's remaining old-growth forests to provide vital food for their herds during the cold winter months. The reindeer forests have been reduced piece by piece by the government's own logging company, Metsähallitus, which carries out most of the logging in Lapland.
The destruction of Finnish forests could mean Santa won't be able to make his round-the-world trip this Christmas. Rudolph and his reindeer friends usually fly Mr Claus and his sleigh of presents across the globe for the annual chimney-squeezing bonanza - but Lapland's most famous animals are increasingly threatened.
Hundreds of species face extinction in the Finnish forests in the coming years without further revision of the Finnish Forest Certification System (FFCS). This is the key finding of the report "Certifying extinction? - An assessment of the revised standards of the FFCS" which was released today jointly by Greenpeace, the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation and the Finnish Nature League.
