(Translation from Swedish) Reports published by Sweden on nature conservation are very important as they provide an overview of the state of Sweden's natural environment. This also applies to the so-called Article 17 report, through which Sweden informs the European Union (EU) about the protection of species and landscapes.
Statistical data is often used to highlight supposedly negative trends in biodiversity in Swedish forests. For instance, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) recently published an article arguing for a new forest policy, stating that 14 out of 15 Swedish forest types have an unsatisfactory conservation status. The Swedish Forest Agency (Skogsstyrelsen), as one of the reasons why the Swedes are unable to meet their goal for viable forests (Levande Skogar), mentions that fifteen out of the sixteen forest landscape types mentioned in the Habitats Directive have an unsatisfactory or inadequate conservation status.
Sweden's report to the European Union on conservation status is summarised here. Compared to other EU countries, Sweden is presented as having one of the worst forest conservation statuses. To those who know that very little natural forest area remains in most of the EU, this might seem strange. In reality, when reporting on the state of its forests, Sweden deliberately chooses to portray itself as having one of the worst performance records.
I have written before that the criteria developed by Sweden for determining a favourable conservation status differ significantly from those of other countries. In Sweden, to be classified as having a favourable conservation status, it is required that existing habitats cover 20% of the area they occupied in the so-called pre-industrial era. This criterion exists only in Sweden. This means that to classify a habitat's status as favourable, at least 2.5 million hectares of natural forest would need to be restored.
However, the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (Naturvårdsverket) claims that this reference value was not the decisive factor in determining the conservation status. Instead, they assessed the extent of the decrease in natural forest area and the sufficiency of forest quality in terms of structure and function. The "future prospects" of habitats were also taken into account.
In that case, has the natural forest area actually decreased? According to data compiled by the National Forest Inventory (Riksskogstaxeringen), it has not! Since the introduction of landscape type classification, the share of forests for which there is sufficient statistical data has increased. This applies, for example, to western taiga, which is mostly understood to mean forest. The total area of natural forest has also increased, even if we do not include the most common types of natural forest - taiga and swamp forests. The area of forest classified by habitat has increased in all regions of the country. It should be noted that statistical data for the early years are inaccurate because inventory systems were not yet fully established during that period. This is most clearly visible in the five-year average for 2010, which can be seen in the image below. Therefore, this value could potentially be disregarded (verbal information received from Riksskogstaxeringen).
In cases where the Species Information Centre concludes that the area of forest habitats is decreasing, it is often assumed that every area of harvested forest is a loss and that none of these forest types will recover. This is not true! Even previously managed forests gradually acquire characteristics that allow them to be classified as meeting habitat criteria, as can be seen in the statistics compiled by Riksskogstaxeringen. If we assume that forest habitats do not regenerate, then the conservation status of forests will always be unsatisfactory after forest areas have been harvested or destroyed in some way. This would effectively render the aforementioned assessments meaningless.
The next issue concerns the quality of the forest classified under the habitat category, which, according to the Swedish report, is apparently insufficient. However, for Riksskogstaxeringen to assign a habitat classification to a forest, it must meet certain quality requirements. It follows that a forest qualified as belonging to a habitat type also meets the quality criteria. Therefore, it is likely that everything cannot be judged by a single measure. A forest that possesses the characteristics to be classified as, for example, western taiga, may at the same time not meet the natural forest quality requirements that would lead to a favourable conservation status. Why does the National Forest Inventory (Riksskogstaxeringen) set such quality requirements? In the mentioned case, should the boreal forest be classified as western taiga, or some other habitat type?
I can conclude that the area of forest classified by habitat in Sweden would be at the level of the reference values if we, like other countries, had set the reference value as the area at the time of our EU accession. If the statistics compiled by the National Forest Inventory (Riksskogstaxeringen) were used as a benchmark, the forest area figures would not have decreased. And if the quality requirements set by Riksskogstaxeringen were considered sufficient, there would be no basis for assessing the conservation status as unfavourable. By applying such evaluation criteria, the conservation status of a large proportion of forest habitats would be considered favourable, and Sweden would not be counted as one of the EU countries with the worst-protected forests.
Sometimes it seems to me that the Swedish authorities want to present the state of our forests in an unnecessarily bad light.
Figure. Area of forest classified by habitat (in hectares). 5-year average. Source: National Forest Inventory (Riksskogstaxeringen)
