An unmanaged natural forest consists of a great diversity of species and structures. Here, centuries-old trees grow side by side with young, there is a large amount of both standing and lying dead wood, and a myriad of life forms.
Forests are not just trees. Forests are an entire ecosystem, a teeming with life. An environment made up of fungi, plants and animals. Natural forests are shaped by ecological processes such as storms, fires, grazing and floods. An environment where trees play a central role as host plants for thousands of other forest-dwelling species.
In a natural forest ecosystem, trees go through their entire life cycle: they germinate, grow, grow old, die and fall. The dead stems slowly decompose, creating a home for many organisms. Hence the expression: “dead wood lives”. The importance of dead wood as a habitat in the forest cannot be overemphasized. In the Swedish forests there are over 6000 species associated with dead wood, everything from fungi, mosses and lichens to various animals. Natural forests often contain a lot more dead wood of several qualities, of different tree species and stages of decomposition, than young managed production forests and plantations do. It is only in the shrinking area of natural forest that there are usually sufficient amounts of dead wood today.
Forests are and give life. Our remaining Swedish natural forests are very species-rich ecosystems that provide habitats for a myriad of species. In Sweden there are many thousands of forest-dwelling animals, plants and fungi. A forest is made up of all these species and the interaction between them. Under the ground, the plants are linked together by large fungal networks. Despite the enormous diversity of species in the forest, there are only a few dozen tree species in Sweden, but they still form the backbone of forest ecosystems: different tree species create many ecological niches during their different life stages.
Forests save lives. Natural forests store large amounts of carbon and are our most important friend in a changing climate. The forest also purifies the air we breathe, is part of the water cycle and forms the basis for a wide range of other ecological functions that we all depend on! At a time when the world’s species are disappearing 100 to 1000 times faster than is natural, and the area of wild forests is shrinking and the species associated with them are being displaced by human influence, it is our duty to protect the world’s last natural forests. Can you really consider a spruce plantation as a forest?
How much forest is left in Sweden?
This question can be answered in different ways depending on which definition one chooses to use. If you use the FAO’s definition, about 70% of Sweden is covered with forest. However, this definition includes clear-cutting, as well as plantations that contain only one tree species. Such monocultures are home to very few species because they are uniform and lack the structures and elements found in natural forests such as coarse old trees, dead wood, older deciduous trees and different vegetation layers. It goes without saying that this definition suits those who want to claim that there is a lot of forest in Sweden and that the amount of forest even increases over time. If, on the other hand, we use the ecological definition, the amount of forest has decreased for a long time. This is especially visible if you look at the amount of forest with long continuity.
Is it true that we have more forest now than ever?
Many people probably think that a forest is a collection of trees. But, can we really say that a monoculture of eucalyptus, oil palms, pine, lodgepole pine or spruce planted in rows is a forest? Or is a forest something more than just a raw material that can be measured in cubic metres? Trees can be planted, but not a natural forest. The forest industries often claim that we have more forest than ever. This is factually wrong no matter how you measure. But, even if you measure in standing volume of living trees, as they do, their claim is still wrong. If you also exclude plantations and hard-managed industrial stands of trees, then in reality we have less real forest now than in thousands of years.
Industry lobbyists often claim that we have more forests than ever. By “forest” they really mean the volume of trees. The era of the forest industry seems to begin in the 1920s. Then, after many decades of hard-working forestry, forest statistics began to be collected, when the standing volume of forest in the country was lower than before due to all the felling of large, large trees that went to build up the sawmill industry. Therefore, the industry usually claims that we have never had as much forest as we do now, with the implication that it is not a problem to harvest more, and that it is the forest industry’s merit that we have so much “forest”.
But, this is misleading no matter how you measure. Even if, like the forest industry, the amount of forest is measured in terms of standing volume of trees, the claim is misleading. Despite the increased volume of timber since the 1920s, we may still have less timber in Norrland today than in the 1850s, and this despite the fact that there was a lot more burning historically, despite extensive forest grazing in the historic forests, and despite the fact that a lot of former agricultural areas have now been replanted with timber fields. Today, the tree stands, or the so-called forests, and their structure, are completely different. Now a significant part of the volume is found in young, monotonous industrial stands of trees that are dense. At that time, in the 1850s, a large part of the volume in boreal Sweden was in old, coarse trees, which stood in sparsely varied natural forests. In the 1990s, prominent forest historians stated that “in historical times, Sweden’s boreal forests have never had so little old forest, so few coarse trees and so little dead wood”. The loss of natural forests and the densification of forest environments with dense production stands are the main reasons why many species have declined and become red-listed in Sweden. If you exclude plantations and hard-managed industrial stands of trees from the term “forest”, then in reality we have much, much less real forest now than before. We should restore today’s plantations to forests.
