The knee-root orchid is red-listed and, together with other red-listed species, it is used by environmental organizations and non-profit forces to stop logging.
The finds are reported to SLU’s species database and to the Norwegian Forestry Agency – and the finds have increased significantly in recent years.
Forest industry
The first heavy electric truck in the forestry industry runs in Skoghall
The unknown pest of the spruce: the double-eyed bast borer – inventoried for the first time
– Look, a knee-jerk! And they have said that they take the root of the tree into account, but here it is, in the middle of the clearing, says forest ecologist Sebastian Kirppu when SVT meets him at a clearing in Ånge municipality.
Years of legal disputes
The forestry industry claims that the plant is not particularly threatened at all, and that the small plant stops too many fellings.
A few miles away, at Marktjärn in Ånge municipality, Ola Kårén, head of forest management at SCA, stands looking out over a forest that was only given permission to cut down after a four-year legal dispute with the Nature Protection Association.
– If we can’t cut down this forest, then we wonder which forest we should cut down.
The government is reviewing the rules
But the lack of wood raw material has led to the government now reviewing the rules, how easy it should be to stop felling in the future and to what extent protected species should be taken into account.
Sweden’s forest industry
Sweden is one of the world’s largest exporters of pulp, paper and sawn wood products. Approximately 80 percent of all forest that is cut down is exported. And the total export value of forest products last year amounted to a full 184 billion kroner.
Sweden is also the country that clears its forests the most – only 8 percent of the forest outside nature reserves and national parks is so-called old forest.