More often than not, the story is heard that it is a pity for the forest owners who are threatened by the three-toed woodpecker. But there are stories that never get out. The rural residents who care about the forest for real, more than for it to become wood chips and pulpwood, face threats and harassment. They do not dare to go out in the media with their name and picture because they live close to the forest owner. Here is the story of Lennart and his wife who have been affected by forestry up close.
Lennart lives in a red cottage in the Swedish countryside. He loves the tranquility of the forest. Wouldn’t be able to imagine living anywhere else. His wife Gudrun is in a wheelchair after a stroke, but with the help of home care she can still live at home, which they are grateful for. Lennart is now out in the woods alone, but as often as he can. It gives him the strength to cope. He picks mushrooms and lingonberries. Know where the old forests with moss covers where the orchids bloom in the spring are. He knows where the barn owl lives. That there is a three-toed woodpecker territory in the area. He has seen this in the characteristic ringing marks in the pines.
Lennart and Gudrun study the birds at the bird table in winter. They note that nowadays there are more bullfinches at the table than there used to be. There are more forest birds in general that seek out their bird tables. That is something that worries them. Several properties in the area have been sold and bought up by a land investor and a feverish activity with blasting and forest road construction has been going on in recent years. In the forest there is a hiking trail that has had to be rerouted so that forests can be cut down. The clear-cuts are getting closer and closer. Lennart gets worried. Will there be no old-growth forest left at all? The woodpecker, and the pine titan that lives here that is dependent on old-growth forest, where will they go?
The new neighbor who bought up the land in the area is rarely there. He has properties in several different places in Sweden and abroad where he mostly lives. Lennart mows his lawn and brings in the mail for him during the periods he is away. The new neighbor is not the type of person he prefers to hang out with, he is too hot-tempered and judgmental, but here in the country you help each other. That’s just the way it is. One day, when Lennart hands over the mail he has brought in while his neighbour has been abroad and they exchange a few words, Lennart expresses his concern about the increased activity in the forest and tells him about the rare woodpecker that has its territory in the area and that it is important that it is allowed to have forest left. The neighbor snorts.
“You should buy your own forest and you can let it stand and rot for the woodpeckers if you want to. Not to come and have views on what others are doing with their land.”
Lennart, who has lived all his life in the area, recoils from it. Here, the neighbors have always been able to talk to each other. The widow who lives down the road spoke to all those involved when she was planning her latest felling. She listened to what was valuable to the neighbors. She took down the plantation but refrained from certain areas so that her neighbors’ houses would not be exposed to visibility from the road and wind. Yes, it was her forest and she did what she wanted with it. But so were her neighbors and she obviously wants to show consideration for them. That was always the case here. And the natural forest she had, she had some spruces taken down in, but otherwise it was left standing. Because who wants to live in a forest without forest? This place is the city of the forest. The people, they are just guests here.
Lennart went home worried. The land investor had also bought the plantation in front of Lennart and Gudrun’s house. It was like spruce plantations are, dull and dense but at least it protected from seeing the wind turbines that were slammed up in that direction a few years ago. He’s right, if I want to have a say in the matter, I need to own the land, Lennart thought. He had saved some money to have for unforeseen expenses. So he went back to the neighbor and asked if he could possibly buy the small piece of land that was in front of the house. The answer was a blank no.
Lennart, who until now has only noted and rejoiced in his heart over the rich natural values in the area, begins to register his finds of the woodpecker’s ringed tree in SLU’s Artportalen so that its habitat can remain. This was fortunate because the area where the three-toed woodpecker had its territory was soon notified of felling. The neighbor’s plans are stopped by the Swedish Forest Agency and he is furious. He calls the local newspaper, which does a report that a landowner is threatened by a three-toed woodpecker. This particular local newspaper’s reporter was on alert and actually asks the counter-question if it can not be an alternative to apply to have his forest protected, as the forest owner can get 125% of the property value if he has a forest with such high natural values that a three-toed woodpecker has its territory there? Then he also avoids the expenses for felling and soil preparation.
No, it’s about the principle, that he should be able to decide for himself what to do with his forest, a woodpecker should not decide. The woodpecker can move, I can’t.
But he does have a house in Thailand. And an apartment in Stockholm. And he just moved here. So it’s not completely impossible to move. But the story does not tell the story in the newspaper report.
One evening there is a knock on Lennart’s door and when he opens the door, the neighbour is standing outside and says that he should be careful of what he has registered in Artportalen.
“Are you threatening me?”
“No, I’m just telling it like it is.”
After that, Lennart does not feel safe in the area. He understands that his neighbour has spread out to other forest owners in the area that he has registered finds of protected birds in Artportalen. Cars drive unnecessarily close to Lennart’s car, accelerate and overtake, the drivers shake their fists, blink and so on. People who have previously greeted him turn their backs on him when he enters the store. Lennart starts locking the door at night. Look around when he is out walking. He stops registering finds in Artportalen. He doesn’t dare anymore.
On a beautiful June day, the forest machines thunder in front of Lennart’s and Gudrun’s house. The plantation begins to be felled.
”Is he crazy! If he had waited 10 years, he would have gotten twice that! ” exclaims another neighbor who is visiting as the felling of the almost thirty-year-old trees begins.
No, he doesn’t gain anything by taking down such a young forest. It’s not even allowed. But it is revenge for Lennart putting in finds of ring-fenced trees in Artportalen and Lennart does not dare to contact the Swedish Forest Agency that such young forest is being cut down.
He doesn’t even dare to go out with his car on mushroom excursions because his car is pointed out in the area as one of those that registers red-listed species. Nowadays, Lennart takes the bike when he goes out into the woods.
When it’s lunch break and the forest machines have fallen silent, Lennart takes Gudrun out with her wheelchair so she can be in the sun for a while. A fiery engine noise can be heard. The neighbor who has seen that they have gone out into the garden comes rushing on his quad bike. He brakes at the fence, turns off the engine and says with a broad smile “Well Gudrun, what do you think of your new view?”
Gudrun does not answer. She cries. She cries for all the chicks that were in their nests in the trees and had not yet learned to fly and that did not escape when their nesting trees were cut down. She cries because the windmills that were previously not visible behind the trees are now fully exposed. She cries because he laughs at her sorrow. Because he wants her and the forest badly. Or what does she really know about his motives. Maybe he was just bored and wanted some action in the woods. Gudrun grew up here and the forest is a part of her. Forestry has always been going on here, but not like this. Just because. The forest has been managed with sense and balance, common sense and reason. Not like now when land investors with no relation to the site buy up forest just to level it with the tubers and then harrow up the land as if it were any other field.
The devastation machines start again and continue hour after hour. The whole cabin shakes from the vibrations of the huge machines. The dog does not want to go out for several days. He lies inside and trembles under the kitchen sofa. Lennart goes out with him at five o’clock in the morning before the machines start up again at dawn. The cat is gone and comes home and stinks of diesel. When it is seven o’clock in the evening and the forest machines are still running, Lennart goes out and knocks on the cab and says: “Please, my wife is disabled, we need to sleep.”
“I’m sorry, I have a job to do,” says the forest machine operator and continues his job well into the night. That evening, Lennart himself has to carry Gudrun out of the wheelchair into bed. He should not really do it for his back, but wait for the home care staff. But they couldn’t get to the house because a timber truck blocked off the road.
The author’s personal reflections:
It is not about forest owners versus nature lovers. There is no contradiction between owning forests and protecting nature. But the forest owners who manage the forest with care for the species that live there do not dare to protest against the devastation so as not to be seen as activists and offend neighbors and hunting teammates. But the landowners who protect forest ecosystems are punished because of this devastation that is going on in our forests, cheered on by the forest companies, where ecologically and economically valuable timber forests are replaced with weak plantation trees in timber fields according to the pulp industry’s wishes. Since Swedish forestry is completely marinated by the forest industry’s narrative about the need for high-intensity forestry before a sustainable process at the forest’s own pace, natural forest after natural forest is smoking. This means that the forest farmers who show respect for their forest suddenly find themselves with the only forest in the area where the woodpeckers and forest orchids can find refuge in. And if they need to cut down a larger area (thinning forest does not need a felling notification), they are not allowed to do so. It is not the woodpeckers’ or activists’ fault, but the fault lies in the devastation train that has made three-toed woodpeckers homeless and red-listed. A devastation train cheered on by the Federation of Swedish Farmers, which would rather see species protection changed than change unsustainable forestry. Which points out the real victims of the clear-cutting storm that has swept across the Swedish forests: the woodpecker and the kneeroot as the problem, not the clear-cutting that wipes out the worlds of the forest species. If the forest had been managed in a different way, the forest species would not have been red-listed, and the environment and forestry would not have been in opposition to each other.
The story that it is a pity for the forest owners who are threatened by the three-toed woodpecker is heard all too often. The rural dwellers who care about the forest for real, more than that it will become wood chips and pulpwood at the price of any species, they are threatened with being shot during the moose hunt, having their cat run over, not getting snow clearance, not being allowed to buy firewood, or having the value of their property reduced when the forest along the corner of the house is razed to the ground if they express a desire to save some forest for the animals and birds as well. Their stories never get out. They do not dare to go out in the media with their name and picture because they live next door to the landowner who has the forest as a hostage.
The forest industry lobby says that environmentalists are roaming around in forests they are not involved with and are registering species. Yes, it is because those who live out in the Swedish countryside are threatened by the agrarian mafia and because the Swedish Forest Agency does not have time to go out to all the felling notifications.
The desperate non-forest-owning rural residents who see that the whole is being torn apart by too hard forestry must secretly contact forest inventors from outside the parish who dare to register species in Artportalen. The system is set up so that the name of the person who registers species is shown, but not who is responsible for the felling notification – it is classified as a trade secret.
And the woodpeckers’ territories, whose forests were stopped by the Swedish Forest Agency from being felled thanks to Lennart’s registration of ringed hoes, how did it go? The land was sold and the new owner quickly notified the felling and it slipped through the Swedish Forest Agency’s wide-mesh net. Now the woodpecker’s forest is stacked in logs along the road, waiting to be shipped to the pulp mill, boiled down and turned into cheap paper to be exported.
We must have toilet paper is an argument you often hear from the forest industry. Yes, but about 80% of Sweden’s forest products are exported. We could thus have reduced the harvest in Sweden and still got the forest products we need and the forests’ carbon sinks and species richness remained.
Money trickles in to the top of the forest companies, forest lands are depleted and species die out that will never come back. Around sixty white-backed woodpeckers are estimated to remain in Sweden. If it continues like this, it will be the same for the three-toed woodpecker. And with the disappearance of the woodpeckers, the number one enemy of the spruce bark beetle has disappeared. The woodpeckers are the forest’s best decontaminators, nature’s own “terminators.” But if they don’t get the opportunity to live, shelter and habitat, they move. If there are chips to move to. If there is no continuity forest left, they die out. Then maybe a new “universal” DDT can come into use? Where we let future generations, children and grandchildren… take the consequences.
Final words: Lennart and Gudrun are actually called something else. They are one example of many out there in the countryside whose properties have their value lowered, their old paths erased, water sources polluted during the clear-cutting of the land and if they have objections to the ruthless devastation, are harassed by something that can almost be likened to an agrarian mafia.
I, who write this, will not sign with my name either, so that Lennart’s and Gudrun’s devastating neighbor will not be able to connect me as a friend and this text to them. People in the cabins out there in the forests cry in the shadows below the media-lit stage while the forest machines rumble days and nights, and then when the machines have fallen silent and rolled away, the birdsong and the drumming of woodpeckers have disappeared with them.
A story rarely heard. But on the other side of the coin for the sake of short-term gain is the great forest sorrow that runs silently and dark in large parts of the depths of the Swedish national soul.
Lennart’s friend