"When we were children, there weren't fences all over. Pastures were good and the reindeers stayed on the pastures. Nowadays, when you shepherd reindeers and there is a clearcut area, the reindeer just stop. They don't use their natural paths, but instead seek untouched areas; their behaviour changes. It is not just that the tree lichens are disappearing and waste from felled trees covers the ground. The wintertime winds behave differently, blowing the snow into dense drifts that the reindeers can't dig into", explains Jorma.

The co-operative has been forced to build fences because logging has changed the tradition of reindeers pasture rotation. "The fence was built only because of Metsähallitus' loggings. Reindeer no longer stayed in the area. The expense has fallen solely upon us. The loggings impact so widely that it cannot be simply understood by a forestry engineer."

Winter pastures with tree hanging lichen are vital to the co-operative of Muotkatunturi. "In early spring the tree hanging lichen is needed. It is a crucial factor for us... Old-growth forests are important for the lichen but also for the trees and the shelter they provide", says Pilvi. "Our reindeer live 100% from nature and get everything they need from around them. That's why this is such a sensitive issue. If the last old-growth forests and lichen forests are taken from us, we will have to start feeding the reindeer, which will decrease our profitability... And that's not all, we would be forced to use more motor vehicles and that will affect everything... This is the most ecological way to herd reindeer - but this doesn't seem to matter at all."

Chitchat and drink coffee

"In the beginning [1970s], Metsähallitus didn't really negotiate at all. They just acted on their own. Now we have these [negotiation] days, where the reindeer master [chair of the herding co-operative] is invited. There we chitchat and drink coffee... They don't really listen to the reindeer herders' opinions there... Here on the local level the Metsähallitus' men seem to think that they are here to do good work for a noble cause and these reindeer herders who try to resist are perpetrators and terrorists. They don't understand reindeer herding and they don't really think of it as anything. It really feels that, on the local level, the reindeer herders' cause is not taken seriously; it's mostly considered mischief" says Jorma.

"One or two years ago, there were loggings planned in the Skaidi forests. During the negotiations, the reindeer herding co-operative managed to postpone it until the late winter, so that the reindeers could at least eat that year's lichen, yet by November the forest was logged... The cause may be good, but some single foreman can obliterate the whole negotiating process. The attitudes of people are hard to change, now that the dispute has become so polarised", Pilvi continues.

"Obviously these things are going to happen, if before any negotiation they take the attitude that are the ones who are right and we are criminals who try to hinder their work", Jorma adds.

For a one-day's newspaper and then to the paper bin

Pilvi and Jorma have a hard time understanding that most of the timber from the reindeer forests is used for pulp. "It is systematically felled and processed to pulp. It doesn't really fit in anyone's clear mind, when you think of how long and slow the trees have grown and then they're cut and boiled to pulp, just like that. This is considered noble wood here. Very fine raw material for the furniture industry for instance, but not in a large scale. And not to a disposable product, for one-day's newspaper and then to the paper bin", Jorma says.

"It does not seem to fit the ideas of the law-makers - that they should only take the biggest trunks. There is no such option, like just taking a little." Pilvi continues.

Nonetheless, Pilvi and Jorma want to continue as reindeer herders. "We'll probably hang on till the bitter end", says Pilvi, "But if our children see that there's no future in it, they'll take other paths".

" We don't live to collect money but just to endure. It's a lot living from hand to mouth, taking what is needed for living from the nature but no more. The role of Metsähallitus seems to be different: taking from the nature for big profits", Jorma says.

"I couldn't live in a city. Just as our reindeer declare that they won't live on clearcut areas or other strange places, for me the city is the same... I'm avoiding it... At most, like the reindeer, I go to the border of a clearcut area to see whether there is anything for me there. I see that there's isn't really, and I come back", Pilvi says.

- Sini Harkki, FANC
(Finnish Association for Nature Conservation)