SCA has once again notified felling forest in an area of more than 200 hectares with very high conservation values at Vargtjärnen in Västernorrrland County. This is despite the fact that Protect the Forest and the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation have requested that SCA not harvest there. The felling should take place with “enhanced consideration” but is still unacceptable. In the forest there are 38 red-listed species, several of which are at risk of extinction in Sweden. This is one of the irreplaceable forests that Sweden needs to protect in its entirety.
Vargtjärnen is located about a mile north of Ljungaverk in Ånge municipality. In June 2022, the Research Trip’s inventors visited the old-growth forest area and found 38 species that are at risk of extinction in Sweden in a longer or shorter time perspective. Protect the Forest and the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation therefore requested that SCA should not harvest there. The associations also requested that the authorities investigate species protection and the possibilities of creating a nature reserve. Initially, SCA had 8 felling notifications in the forest area, but after pressure from the environmental movement, they withdrew these. But now SCA has notified parts of the forest for felling again.
SCA has notified felling again
SCA has notified SCA of 19 hectares for felling, there are two forests in the northeastern part of the Vargtjärn area at Lokarna. One of the felling notifications is for 5.2 ha with high conservation values where a lot of the orchid kneeroot (VU) grows. The second felling notification of 13.8 hectares northeast of Vargtjärn, extends over a registered ancient monument – a trapping pit system. The planned felling entails, among other things, a fragmentation of the area and the green infrastructure. SCA has previously harvested an area 800 metres north of Vargtjärn in the natural forest. Right next to the clearcut, inventors found the very rare wood fungus chalk poring (CR).
The forest at Vargtjärnen is irreplaceable!
In the Vargtjärn area, the Research Trip’s inventories found the very rare wood fungi chalk poring (CR), carbon tick (EN) and primeval forest spore (EN). Chalk poring has an extremely high risk of extinction in Sweden, the carbon tick only grows in about fifty places in the country and is highly endangered, as is the primeval forest pore. The fungi blacktick, spotted poring, cream poring, salmon pit and wrinkle skin, as well as the narrow-footed thorn fungus and the orchid kneeroot, which the inventors found in the forest, are all at great risk of extinction in Sweden in a medium-term perspective. They have the designation vulnerable – VU. Vargtjärnsskogen is a forest in which species can continue to grow, if the forest is allowed to remain in its entirety.
Demonstration against SCA in Sundsvall on January 18
On Thursday this week, January 18, at 4-5 p.m., Protect the Forest, Fridays for Future and the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation, among others, will hold a demonstration outside SCA’s headquarters. Representatives from the various associations will give speeches, they will hand over an open letter to SCA and also the reports from the Research Trip. “We protest against SCA’s climate-damaging logging methods as well as its systematic felling of irreplaceable forests with high conservation values.”
Read the previous article about Vargtjärn