SCA has published a digital map of the company’s forests voluntarily set-aside for nature conservation. This is forests that SCA has voluntarily exempted from forest management due to its high conservation values, as the company says in the press release received by Lesprom Network.
In total, more than 166,000 hectares, or 8% of SCA’s productive forest land, is completely exempt from forest management and a further 59,000 hectares is managed with adapted methods with a particular focus on creating the best possible conditions for the forest’s flora and fauna.
SCA owns 2,600,000 hectares of forest. These forests are inventoried to identify areas with high conservation values and to ensure that areas important for forest biodiversity are protected. Additional forest areas are managed to improve conditions for sensitive animal and plant species. This may involve controlled burning of forest areas or encouraging broad-leaved forest to dominate.
“One in five trees are left to live and die a natural death to provide life environments for all living things in the forest,” says Jonas Mårtensson, President of the Forest business area. “This map will make it easy for everyone to share in the diversity and conservation values that are present in our forests.
In the digital map, forest age, the main tree species and the most common type of ground vegetation are stipulated for areas that SCA has exempted from forest management, as well as areas that are managed with adapted methods.
SCA continuously conducts set-asides of new forest, which means the map will be updated on an ongoing basis. Areas with lower conservation values may be replaced by areas with higher values.
The core of SCA’s business is the forest, Europe’s largest private forest holding.
