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5. Conservation Status

The following section attempts to assess the current conservation status of old-growth forests and valuable areas in each of the countries of the region. This analysis looks at legally protected areas as well as voluntary protected areas and other legal mechanisms for protection. This section also offers recommendations from the scientific community for the level of protection needed. The information included for each country differs slightly because of the availability and breadth of recent analyses on the subject. Due to the complexity of the situation in Russia and the emerging nature of the protection mechanisms, the information presented for Northern European Russia is a bit more in depth than that presented for Fennoscandia.

The government structures and mechanisms available for forest protection in the Fennoscandian countries are quite similar. However, the ownership structure in the countries of Norway, Sweden and Finland is quite different (see Table 4). Obviously the owner of the forest area is in the position to decide whether or not to protect a valuable area and which mechanisms to implement. For this reason it is important to note the breakdown of forest owners in the different countries.

Table 4. Ownership of forest resources, in millions of hectares

	Norway	Sweden	Finland	Northern European Russia1
State-owned	0.83	2.1	5.0	68.7
Private companies	0.28	9	1.7	0
Private landowners	5.6	11.5	12.4	0
Other	0.33	0	1.0	0
TOTAL	7.04	22.6	20.1	68.7

¹ This number includes only forest lands of the State Forest Fund (FF).
Sources:
Swedish Yearbook of Forest Statistics 1999;
Finnish Statistical Yearbook of Forestry 1998;
Norwegian Institute for Statistic Studies (SST) 1999;
and Strakhov et al. 1996.

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