| From: [email protected] (Anders Sundin)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.nordic
Date: 23 Nov 1993 12:54:28 GMT
Organization: Organic Chemistry 2, Lund University, Sweden
We have forests where you can walk for hundreds of kilometres before
you find a single house. However it is true that almost all forests in
Sweden bear some marks of cultivation and civilisation, some from
hundreds of years ago. Examples: For hundreds of years a lot of forest
was cut to make charcoal for the iron industry. Some mining was
performed by heating the ore with fires and cooling the ore with water
to crack the rock. Most of the big oak trees were cut to build huge
warships.
During the end of the last century and the beginning of this century
only the best trees were cut for the timber industry. This resulted in
large areas of the worst kind of forest with dense growth of small
"bushy" trees where nothing else would grow.
This was changed after WWII. Larger areas were cut at the same time to
remove low quality trees, and to give light for the new trees. A
byproduct of this change in forestry was the almost extinct [moose]
increased enormously in numbers because the harvested areas had lots of
newly released nutrition for small plants.
During the 70-ties this trend went too far. Increased mechanisation
made possible to harvest huge areas at the same time. The surrounding
forest little chance to adsorb all the released nutrition which
resulted in the pollution of rivers and streams. The harvested areas
became very hot during summer and very cold during winter. In Sweden
there were strict laws that regulated the forestry to be this way.
During the late 1980-ties these laws began to be abandoned. It was more
up to the owner of the forest how the forest should be maintained. The
trend changed so smaller areas were harvested (1x1 km instead of 10x10
or even 30x30 km) at the same time.
Furthermore new laws were introduced to protect wetlands, rare species,
and the nests of birds of prey. Nowdays the people who work in forests
have to be well educated in ecology. This means that there will
continue be many biotypes in the forests of Sweden.
There has never been even close to as much timber in the Scandinavian
forests as there is today. It is true that the forests are generally
young, maybe up to 100 years old. However it is wrong to put all of the
blame on todays methods. Most of the old forests of Sweden were cut
down 100 years ago or more.
I wish that some areas could be spared to make "new" old forests,
however, the question is who will pay. For a company it is close to
criminal negligence to their shareholders not to harvest a full grown
forest worth millions.
-Anders
--
Anders Sundin e-mail: [email protected]
Organic Chemistry 2 [email protected]
Lund University, P.O. Box 124 voice: +46 46 104130
S-22100 Lund, Sweden fax: +46 46 108209
|
| From: [email protected] (Anders Sundin)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.nordic
Subject: The Nordic forests
Date: 8 Dec 1993 15:59:15 GMT
Organization: Organic Chemistry 2, Lund University, Sweden
An investigation by Finska Skogsforskningsinstitutet (Finnish Institute
of Forestry Research) shows that Finland and Sweden have a net uptake
of carbon dioxide. For Sweden the uptake is around 1.8 ton carbon per
person and year. Compare this with Germany and England who pollutes the
atmosphere with around 3.3 ton carbon per person and year. The reason
for the net uptake of carbon dioxide in Finland and Sweden is of course
the large areas of rapidly growing forest.
There have been some very negative articles in German and British
press about the Nordic countries plundering their forests and
exterminating species. For this reason Svensk Skog (a group of
companies and organisations with interests in Swedish forestry, with
the goal to follow the European environmental debate and opinions, and
to work as a lobby group) has made an opinion poll.
3000 people in Germany, Holland, and England was asked if their overall
impression of Swedish forestry was positive, negative, or don't know.
7% in Germany, 8% in Holland and 25% in England were negative, 54-60%
had a positive impression.
Those with a positive impression of Swedish forestry motivated their
answer with a general impression of Sweden as an environmentally aware
nation.
Most of those with a negative impression of Swedish forestry gave no
motivation, but among those that did the most common reason was that
too much forest was cut, that the forests were plundered.
Persons with a large interest in environmental issues had a more
positive impression of Swedish forestry than others did.
-Anders
--
Anders Sundin e-mail: [email protected]
Organic Chemistry 2 [email protected]
Lund University, P.O. Box 124 voice: +46 46 104130
S-22100 Lund, Sweden fax: +46 46 108209
|