> The Estonians who live in this area have a Facebook group where they share photos of wildlife. Trail cameras capture stags, wild boar, and the shy lynx. Sometimes, those who walk the road to the stream come across wolf prints, and once that of a bear.
>
> This is the forest the tour guide is proud of. And it’s all being cut down.
I’m an Australian, but consider Estonia my adopted home. I love the country, and value your extraordinary nature and forests highly. It’s enormously sad to see what’s happening across the entire country: to know that most logged Estonian forest is burned, even forest from national parks like Lahemaa, to visit the countryside and villages and see increasing amounts of empty earth around them, and as someone living here it’s especially sad to see the role the Estonian government has to play in encouraging it.
I wrote this article and took most of the photos. Happy to answer any questions.
Yeah, it’s sad what’s happening. I noticed it maybe some 5 years ago, when the most random patch was cut down and ruined a perfectly beautiful pond surrounded by trees (trees defended the pond from the car road next to it, the noise coming from it). Back then I didn’t think much of it, but as years went by, each time I took the same path to that pond, more and more forest patches were cut down. Eventually I noticed it happening all over Estonia.
RMK officials say that everything is okay, perfect, and better than ever, but I can clearly see with my own eyes what has been ruined. Most of the cutting by them is justified by laying the blame on bark beetles – if they say even one is there, they decide to take down the whole patch.
But why are the bark beetles numbers going up? Because RMK likes to cut down forests during birds nesting period, which in turn reduces the numbers or birds who could feed on bark beetles. I currently can’t find the article (it was in Postimees), but one scientist brought out the idea, that how come bark beetles were less of a problem, when forest industry wasn’t as big as it is now? How did the nature itself solve the problem?
When the self-appointed nature preservationist sees a tree being cut down, they always see a tragedy. In reality, it may actually be a tragedy and mean death for an orangutan. However, in many cases, cutting down a tree is just part of forest maintenance.
When a tree in our climate zone has grown to certain size, it will not continue to grow but just falls over and rots. This is the natural order of things for sure, but total waste from economical point of view. The decay will return most of the CO2 from the tree into atmosphere. The soil captures minimal amounts of greenhouse gases (the bogs being a notable exception there). So we need to ensure there is enough healthy forest growing.
I dont want to say that we should totally trust forest owners in Estonia to do the best for nature. However, I believe we have adequate measures in place to ensure that there is not excessive logging and millions of new trees are planted yearly.
Remember that Estonia fought USSR to prevent mining of phosporites to save the environment?
Lahemaa is slowly being cut down and at night you can hear IFVs doing firing drills.
4 comments
> The Estonians who live in this area have a Facebook group where they share photos of wildlife. Trail cameras capture stags, wild boar, and the shy lynx. Sometimes, those who walk the road to the stream come across wolf prints, and once that of a bear.
>
> This is the forest the tour guide is proud of. And it’s all being cut down.
I’m an Australian, but consider Estonia my adopted home. I love the country, and value your extraordinary nature and forests highly. It’s enormously sad to see what’s happening across the entire country: to know that most logged Estonian forest is burned, even forest from national parks like Lahemaa, to visit the countryside and villages and see increasing amounts of empty earth around them, and as someone living here it’s especially sad to see the role the Estonian government has to play in encouraging it.
I wrote this article and took most of the photos. Happy to answer any questions.
Yeah, it’s sad what’s happening. I noticed it maybe some 5 years ago, when the most random patch was cut down and ruined a perfectly beautiful pond surrounded by trees (trees defended the pond from the car road next to it, the noise coming from it). Back then I didn’t think much of it, but as years went by, each time I took the same path to that pond, more and more forest patches were cut down. Eventually I noticed it happening all over Estonia.
RMK officials say that everything is okay, perfect, and better than ever, but I can clearly see with my own eyes what has been ruined. Most of the cutting by them is justified by laying the blame on bark beetles – if they say even one is there, they decide to take down the whole patch.
But why are the bark beetles numbers going up? Because RMK likes to cut down forests during birds nesting period, which in turn reduces the numbers or birds who could feed on bark beetles. I currently can’t find the article (it was in Postimees), but one scientist brought out the idea, that how come bark beetles were less of a problem, when forest industry wasn’t as big as it is now? How did the nature itself solve the problem?
Even protected Natura 2000 areas weren’t safe: https://news.postimees.ee/7302451/estonia-looking-at-100-000-fine-for-clearcutting-protected-areas
Oh well
When the self-appointed nature preservationist sees a tree being cut down, they always see a tragedy. In reality, it may actually be a tragedy and mean death for an orangutan. However, in many cases, cutting down a tree is just part of forest maintenance.
When a tree in our climate zone has grown to certain size, it will not continue to grow but just falls over and rots. This is the natural order of things for sure, but total waste from economical point of view. The decay will return most of the CO2 from the tree into atmosphere. The soil captures minimal amounts of greenhouse gases (the bogs being a notable exception there). So we need to ensure there is enough healthy forest growing.
I dont want to say that we should totally trust forest owners in Estonia to do the best for nature. However, I believe we have adequate measures in place to ensure that there is not excessive logging and millions of new trees are planted yearly.
Remember that Estonia fought USSR to prevent mining of phosporites to save the environment?
Lahemaa is slowly being cut down and at night you can hear IFVs doing firing drills.