Money does grow on trees for Finnish paper mill worker Kari Ahonjoki. "The salary is very good. It is the best you can get around this town," said 28-year-old Ahonjoki, who began working in the timber industry 10 years ago. Paper and pulp workers earn almost a third more than the average 12 euros (dollars) an hour wage that other blue-collar employees get in Finland. But Ahonjoki's enthusiasm for his job as an operator of a huge paper processing machine at the UPM-Kymmene mill in Valkeakoski is not shared by everyone because Finland faces a growing dilemma - how to balance its economic needs and those of the environment. About three quarters of Finland is covered in forest, which has a key impact on its identity and culture. Finland is home to some of the biggest and most profitable timber groups, including Stora Enso and UPM-Kymmene. Most experts view the Finnish timber industry's environmental record favourably despite its impact on the environment through emissions into air and water as well as tree felling. "In general, Finnish forestries are not doing badly," said Timo Tanninen, director of the World Wide Fund for Nature in Finland. "They have more room to improve in the management of the forests than at the mills, but when it comes to waste water treatment they are among the leading companies in the whole world," he said. Experts differ about what has influenced Finnish forestry firms in adopting such high environmental standards. Some said big customers, particularly large publishers and printing houses in Germany and Britain, where opposition to tree felling is considerable, have forced forestry companies into taking more concrete steps. Others say it is because of the environmental values that permeate Finnish society. Every fifth family owns some woodland and under the law, which Finns take much pride in, everyone has the right to walk in any forest or pick berries - a symbol of their closeness to nature. "The Finnish public is a major reason why the Finnish forest industry is doing better in environmental protection than the industry in many other countries," saidHeikki Toivonen, researcher at the Finnish Environment Institute. "As most of the timber comes from the Finnish forest, the public is following what is going on," he added. But in a recent television viewer poll a majority of Finns said the woods in northern Finland should not be protected further because the country had enough forests. Only one person in 10 thought economic needs and the environment had to be well balanced. Analysts said forestry firms increasingly take into account the demands of environmentalists and as a consequence have started to tell the public more about the wood's origins as well as using more recycled paper as the raw material. "Forestry companies have already changed the way they are acting...because Germany is a very important market and they really have to listen to German consumers and also environmentalists," said Pekka Spolander, a forestry analyst at Finland's Evli Bank. For the past two years the World Economic Forum has named Finland the world leader in ecological sustainability. But the industry still faces growing pressure from nature protection groups to make its wood purchasing practices more environmentally-friendly even though more trees are replanted annually in Finland than cut down. Environmentalists say the government should protect more forested areas, particularly the few remaining old growth forests, which are vital for biodiversity, or simply for keeping existing animal and plant species alive, such as the brown bear, wolf and flying squirrel. These are rare or extinct elsewhere. The industry should also set higher requirements for its main timber suppliers, the private land owners, to safeguard biodiversity, they said. "It's funny that every little kid in Finland knows about the biodiversity issue in the tropical rain forests but they are not aware of the very same problem here," said Matti Liimatainen, a forest campaigner for Greenpeace in Finland. Environmentalists say Finnish and Swedish biodiversity research shows that 10 percent of woodland was the minimum needed to be conserved to maintain biodiversity. Finland falls short of this and the situation is most difficult in the south of the country where conserved areas amount to only one percent, with hundreds of species threatened. Industry bodies said the forest could be protected by specifying so-called habitats within the forests because there was not enough money to buy the forests from private owners. Forestry and related sectors employs almost one in 10 of Finland's 2.4 million workforce, especially in scarcely inhabited areas and the issue is regionally very sensitive.