Speaker
Description
The Birds Directive protects wild bird species, their habitats, and prohibits deliberate disturbance during the nesting season. Forest operations—particularly timber harvesting—during the nesting season may have negative impacts on bird habitats, breeding success, and populations. The recent decision of the EU Court of Justice creates a need to specify and clarify national regulations regarding logging practices during the breeding season also in Finland.
In Finland, the nesting season typically extends from April to July, although its exact timing varies by region and species. Limiting logging, forest management, and regeneration activities during this period would have substantial implications for forest management practices, the forest industry, and the availability of wood for industrial processing and energy use.
Wood harvesting in Finland is seasonal, with a greater emphasis on the winter season. Additional restrictions during the nesting season would further intensify this seasonality, increasing the demand for forest machines and their operators during a short winter window. Timber storage needs would rise, affecting an increase in costs of harvesting, logistics and storage. Concurrently, there would be an increase in winter transport volumes, thereby amplifying seasonal pressure on timber trucks and labour availability.
We examined the impacts of harvesting restrictions during bird nesting-season on wood supply, forestry operations, and the forest industry in Finland using predefined scenarios. These scenarios were compared with a baseline to assess cost impacts, labour and machine demands, and effects on production volumes and value added in the wood-processing industry.
Scenario analysis of the most extreme change scenario showed that eliminating all summer logging would increase the unit timber harvesting and storage costs (incl. logging, trucking and storage costs) by around 6% and reduce annual wood harvesting by approximately 25%, resulting in substantial economic impacts.
In an alternative scenario where 50% of the harvesting potential during the nesting season were shifted to harvest to winter (January–March), the unit harvesting and storage costs would increase by around 17%. This shift would require an additional 3,723 operators (including harvester, forwarder, and timber truck operators) and 2,383 additional machines and vehicles during winter.
The least disruptive scenario involved reallocating harvesting of broadleaved-dominated sites and spruce-dominated bogs to winter. This option increased harvesting and storage costs by only 2.7% compared to baseline scenario. This scenario would align with national recommendations from the forest industry and the Finnish FSC standard, as well as with the current legislative proposal in Finland.
It should be noted that not all the scenarios studied are feasible, or their implementation would require significant changes in wood procurement practices, business operations, and the availability and stability of the workforce. The most challenging factors mentioned are the limited availability of skilled labour for short-term seasonal work and the difficulty of running a profitable and sustainable harvesting business in such a seasonal sector. Additionally, a critical factor is the impact of increased logistics costs on stumpage prices and the availability of wood, as well as on the competitiveness of the forestry industry.
| Keywords | "harvesting”; “trucking”; “seasonality”; “scenario-analysis” |
|---|
