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Each year, about 1% of Sweden’s forest is cut down, according to the trade association Swedish Forest Industries, mainly in the northern half of the country. Since 2000, Sweden has lost more than 48,000 sq km (19,000 sq miles) of tree cover, not accounting for replanting, or 17% since 2000, according to Global Forest Watch. It is an area greater than Denmark
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Most cleared areas are replanted with monoculture plantations to be harvested again in 60 to 80 years. According to Swedish Forest Industries, at least 380m trees a year are planted. Many environmentalists and indigenous Sami reindeer herders say a rethink of this model is urgently needed
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The state authority, the Swedish Forest Agency, argues that Sweden’s total standing volume of timber in its forests has almost doubled since the first national inventory in the 1920s. Pine, seen here in an old-growth forest, and spruce are the dominant tree species in Sweden
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The remains of an old-growth forest are silhouetted against the aurora borealis in Pajala municipality, in Sweden’s northernmost county of Norrbotten
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Logs from an old-growth forest in northern Sweden. Sebastian Kirppu, a forest biologist, counted more than 100 trees that were more than 150 years old in these piles
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Last month, 33 signatories, including representatives of youth movements such as Fridays for Future Sweden, and indigenous communities, such as the Saami Council, wrote to the European commission warning: ‘The Swedish forestry model is wreaking havoc. The forest ecosystem has changed so dramatically that not even the reindeer that have learned to survive on these lands since the ice age can live in the landscape that this type of forestry creates’
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Ancient trees are a vital host for lichen, a key source of food for reindeer
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More than 70% of Sweden’s lichen-rich forest has disappeared in the past 60 years. This hugely affects northern Sweden’s Sami people. Their culture and livelihoods are closely tied to that of the reindeer, which rely on lichen for survival
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Thousands of logs seen from overhead at a timber terminal. Sweden is the world’s third biggest exporter of pulp, paper and sawn timber
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Cranes moving logs at a timber terminal near Sundsvall, in north-eastern Sweden on the Gulf of Bothnia
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Nearly 70% of Sweden is covered by forest, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, but clear-cutting has fragmented the landscape, as seen here in Gavleborg county
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Forests affected by clear-cutting are seen along the E14 motorway outside the far northern town of Jokkmokk
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‘A few years ago, this was prime reindeer habitat,’ says Jan-Erik Lanta, carrying his son, Ingemar, on his shoulders outside the town of Jokkmokk. ‘There was plenty of lichen for them to eat in winter, and shelter. Now, there’s nothing. Even if my son becomes an old man, he will not see this place return to what it was’
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‘There were paths going through these forests – paths where my ancestors walked, where I could feel their presence,’ says Henrik Blind of Tuorpon Sami district. ‘But as the forests are cut down, so those paths disappear.’ Twenty-nine Sami districts warned in November 2020 that forestry was severely threatening their grazing lands
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Reindeer owners Hans Holma and Tomas Seva stand in an almost treeless area in Muonio Sami district, on the Finnish border
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The loss of old-growth forests are a concern for many other locals, including those active in nature-based tourism. Johan Stenevad, owner of Lapland Guesthouse, says: ‘Soon, plantations are all that will remain. That will be the end of both tourism and of our communities’
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There is increasing public pressure to protect Sweden’s publicly owned forests, which make up about a fifth of the country’s total
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A few trees are left standing with tape bearing labels such as ‘nature conservation’ and ‘consideration’ around their trunks in Pajala municipality
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A stand of old trees clear-cut outside Jokkmokk. In the letter sent in March, the signatories wrote: ‘Natural forests are not renewable. Trees can be planted, but not forests.’ They added: ‘If you plant pine trees, you get a timber field, not a forest. Real forests are complex ecosystems, a bedrock of a multitude of life and home for many species’
