Real change rarely comes
quickly as we would like – it’s one of the
tough lessons of environmental campaigning.
But when it eventually does arrive, it can
be very, very sweet,
like the satisfaction of saving an immense
forest in the far north of Europe.
In February 2005, I
was in the back of a car in Northern Finland,
an apparently lifeless, monochrome expanse
of skinny dark trees and dazzling white
snow blur by. “What”, I wondered, “are we
doing here, trying to save these young,
tiny little trees?” I was part of an international
team of Greenpeace activists from all over
Europe and beyond who had arrived in Lapland
to set up the Forest Rescue Station, a kind
of base camp that would put us in a position
to help the local Saami reindeer herders
protect the forest. If the Finnish government
was to have its way, many of these trees
were destined to end up as paper pulp for
books and magazines across Europe.
I had a lot to learn.
It would take me a couple of weeks of immersion
in the Lapland wilderness to truly grasp
the subtleties of the forest. Due to the
short growing season 300km north of the
Arctic Circle, the world’s northernmost
pine trees grow slowly. The wood here is
hard and dense, and the annual growth rings
are close together; the “little” trees I
had scoffed at were actually hundreds of
years old. Days later I was shown a clearcut
– an area that has been completely cleared
of trees half a century before. The “new
growth” pines were barely as high as my
waist, despite being decades old; it would
presumably take hundreds of years for this
area to “return” to anything like its original
state. No one really knows.
Herd of Reindeer in
Ancient Forest, Northern Lapland. Photo
© Greenpeace/Matti Snellman
And that’s where the
good news comes in. last week, Matti, Greenpeace’s
hard-working forest campaigner in Finland,
let us know that following a decade of endeavor,
a final victory has been achieved in the
campaign to protect old-growth forests in
northernmost Finland. Negotations between
the Saami reindeer herders and the Finnish
state forestry company Metsahallitus have
resulted in a deal to protect 80% of the
forests defined as important by both reindeer
herders and Greenpeace in 2002.
These areas – all around
Inari and the Saami area, add up to 80,000
hectares of original, primary forest that
has now been set outside logging areas either
permanently, or for the next 20 years.
The struggle to protect
the Finland’s forest reached its zenith
almost six years ago, between February and
April 2005, when we established the Forest
Rescue Station. Located first on the Finnish-Norwegian
border, and then on the Russian border,
the Forest Rescue Station was crewed by
activists from all over Europe, who hiked,
skied and rode snowmobiles through the forest
with local reindeer herders to chart and
demarcate the forest areas that needed protection.
We had mild weather by local standards,
but it was a shock for some of the fair-weather
southerners; temperatures rarely climbed
above -15C, and that was in the sunshine,
with no wind, while at night we camped in
-30C and below.
Saami reindeer herder
and Greenpeace activist demarcating the
forest.Photo © Greenpeace/Patrik Rastenberger
And then there were
the neighbours. Greenpeace forest activists
around the world regularly come against
fierce opposition sponsored by the logging
industry; in Finland we had to deal with
a supposedly “grassroots” group of loggers
that set up a rival camp to block access
to ours. Activists went through weeks of
sleeplessness and stress; harassed by snowmobiles
and taunts during the daytime, they were
kept awake at night by fire sirens beside
our tents or the windows of our converted
shipping containers. One night, a huge tree
harvesting machine was driven into the heart
of the camp and started cutting down the
trees around us – on another, we were woken
because a tree inside the camp had been
set on fire. But they never “got to us”
– our team kept its sense of humour, and
its determination to carry on.
The Forest Rescue Station.
Photo © Greenpeace/Matti Snellman
I spent two months in
the village of Inari and the Forest Rescue
Station, and despite having trips to the
Southern Ocean, Greenland and West Africa
under my belt since; I still rate my time
in Finland as one of the toughest I’ve experienced
with Greenpeace. There was little respite
from pressure; our vehicles were followed
everywhere, and one activist who lived locally
even started receiving death threats.
But it wasn’t all bad
– an amazing, dedicated family of activists
was formed at the Forest Rescue Station,
and in the town of Inari, we had great support,
from both the Saami people in general, and
the students from the local Education Institute.
Special mention should go to Rosso, the
Italian activist drafted to cook for at
the camp. Even while our tormentors surrounded
us, Rosso was in the kitchen turning out
fresh tagliatelle from the pasta machine
he’d brought with him. And he still maintains
he lost weight from the stress and sleepless
nights… For my part, I fell in love with
the wilderness and wildlife of Lapland,
the long shadows of afternoon, and long
nights of early summer.
The success of the Forest
Rescue Station came not only from working
in the forest itself; our campaigners were
working from the forest, reaching out across
Europe to contact companies directly about
products that were connected to the forest
destruction and building up awareness of
the problem amongst suppliers. Demonstrations
were held not only in Finland, but Germany,
the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland and
Italy – countries where the Finnish wood
was exported to be made into paper. We even
had a group of bestselling authors from
across Europe travel to the forest, concerned
about where the paper in their books might
come from.
All this work eventually
led to an informal moratorium on logging
beginning in 2006. Now, almost five years
later, these forests are protected thanks
to the incredible dedication, commitment
and patience of the Saami people, Greenpeace
folks from Finland and all around Europe.
They’ve worked countless hours, trekking
and camping in subzero temperatures, delivering
messages to the paper industry and governments,
and sitting through rounds of apparently
endless meetings.
They all remembered
to keep their eyes on the prize, even when
suffering setbacks, or when progress seemed
impossible. They believed that the longterm
protect of the forest was possible, and
more importantly, that it was the only acceptable
outcome.
Siberian jays in the
forests of Northern Finland. Photo ©
Greenpeace/Matti Snellman
Greenpeace is campaigning
to protect forests in many different parts
of the world, such as Indonesia, the Congo
and the Amazon; amongst other things, we
are also in the midst of long, hard campaigns
to save our oceans, protect water resources,
and save our climate. The Finnish forest
success outcome is a lesson for us all –
great things are not only possible, they
are inevitable, if we keep maintain our
optimism, have faith in our abilities, and
have the determination to see our work through
to the very end, no matter how long the
fight.
