Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

Swedish forestry (and forestry in general) is a long-term investment that should last through
generations. Some generations are only putting in the money to take care of it and not seeing
much profit. Sometimes there is a point, where an individual landowner decides, it is time to
get at least some income by clearcutting the forest. The state and other marketing systems
convince landowners that clearcutting is the only economic harvesting method (Swedish Forest
Industries, 2022), whereas the wood from a young and severely thinned forest will never be
equal to the quality of wood that an older tree can provide which has been chosen carefully to
be felled.
Clear-felled forests create enormous scars in the landscape, leave animals without shelter by
separating them from their habitats, and the carbon that has been tied down in the forest’s
carbon sink gets emitted to the atmosphere, pushing us ever so closer, little by little, to a
drastically changed climate that is not suitable for us nor most species on Earth. To create a
positive change, we must depend on individuals, such as forest owners and their willingness to
protect nature as best they can by using their resources.
This master’s thesis explores the possibility to create changes that all matter in protecting our
natural values. The thesis offers a framework for landowners to change their ways of forestry
in order to gain income from sustainably controlled tourism by letting tourists help regenerate
forests on a heavily thinned or clearcut area without creating a nature reserve, thus being able
to practice forestry in a more environmentally friendly manner. Some landowners buy the land
already bare, and some just want to change their ways of harvesting.
Allowing tourists to plant the forest themselves will automatically create a connection between
them and the land, which is often missing in our forever rushing and digital world. This
prospect is briefly explored in this work through literature study and results from
questionnaires. By letting the public plant the land, the landowner not only receives labour
from them, but through the experience, they get environmental education that can only come
from first-hand knowledge.
The result of the thesis will present comparisons between potential changes in the landscape,
should this framework be realised.