Abstract

Wide consensus exists that there is a need to extend forest conservation for maintaining biodiversity in Southern Finland. These forests are largely privately owned indicating that mandatory approaches, such as land takings, may not be feasible without strong opposition of forest owners. Therefore, the voluntary-based protection measures, e.g. trading in natural values (TNV), are planned to be used to meet this aim. In TNV, forest owners produce biodiversity services in their lands and receive an incentive payment. So far, there is not so much research done on forest owners’ attitudes to these measures.

This paper provides preliminary results of a survey concerning forest owners’ attitudes to voluntary conservation of forests, and more specifically to TNV. According to the results of this survey, most of the forest owners (about 60%) consider the current conservation level suitable, and for about one fourth even the current level is excessively high. Also, most of the forest owners probably would not offer part of their forest to the TNV in the future even if possible. In addition, the TNV and other voluntary-based protection measures have not changed the attitudes of most of the forest owners to the environmental protection. Thus, extending the conservation network with voluntary agreements can face difficulties due to the attitudes of forest owners. The willingness to participate in voluntary incentive-based instruments is so far fairly low, although there seem to be clear differences among forest owners in different areas. However, many forest owners do not know TNV or other voluntary-based protection measures well enough, and thus, with more information the willingness to participate may increase.