First, they dropped by our little office in Inari - where Satu and Joe greeted them. There wasn't room to bring everyone inside, so we received the group in the car park. A couple of spokesmen came forward, and delivered letters of declaration to Satu and Joe - in Finnish and English. From there, they continued on to the Forest Rescue Station, where the team there received them.

Their concerns are centred around a possible loss of employment in the region - which they feel might be caused by our work here. The declaration states that our 'activities try to put an end to forestry-related sources of livelihood' - which couldn't be further from the truth. In any case, the power to create or destroy jobs lies with the employers, and the government - not an environmental NGO like ours.

As well as the forest workers, some readers of the weblog have been wondering about the jobs issue. Matti, our campaigner, has already spoken about it, elsewhere on this weblog, but here's some of his comments:

"We have proposed many concrete alternatives, solutions and ways forward:

1. The whole Finnish Sámi area must be included under same administrative unit of state forestry enterprise Metsähallitus, and this way all logging in the area can be done with lumberjacks instead of forest harvesters. One logging machine does the job of fifteen men.

2. Compensation by wealthy and healthy Finnish state and industry. The same state who has abused the Sámis rights for decades must take responsibility. The government must clean up the mess it has caused. It must keep lunberjacks employed, and pay them. It is up to the government to source this funds for this compensation and pay. Let the government buy one less F-18 Aircraft, and put that money into this.

The same forest industry who makes billions of Euros in profits every year could donate some euros for solutions here.

Private forestry must continue. We have no objections to private-owned forestry. They can log, let 'em log. They feed sawmills, they feed pulpmills, and that's fine with us, because it's fine with Sámi parliament and the reindeer herders too.

3. All the questions about alternatives are of course interesting here, but because we are not saying that all forestry must end, we do not have to provide answers on "what is our alternative forestry here", because there doesn't need to be - it's OK for us that there is forestry here. It's all about scaling it."

Olli, our Forests Campaigner from Germany, says:

"As Greenpeace is not against forestry in general, but against the logging of the last remaining old growth forests and other important reindeer forests with high conservation value, further protection does not mean any job layoffs. There are other state-owned and private forests which can be managed, as in the past.

It is not an easy solution, but to deny the problem does not lead to any long term solution of this important question.

Currently there are more jobs created from reindeer herding than from logging in state-owned land. The main economic backbone of the region in Lapland is tourism."

- Matti, Olli & Dave

Photo: © Greenpeace/Matti Snellman