Forestry at the edge: Results from the 2020 forest inventory of large forest landscapes

After millennia of human activity, most of the EU today, outside Scandinavia, is a patchwork of crop fields, tree plantations and settlements, devoid of natural forest. And although Scandinavia is still largely covered by forest, most of it is heavily managed by clear-cutting forestry. Natural-like forests are mainly found in steep terrain and low-productive areas, where logging has been difficult or unprofitable, and farming is impossible. Hence, pristine forests, seemingly untouched by human hand, remain only in minuscule patches unevenly tossed out across the EU. But this was not always the case. A large proportion of the European continent was once covered in broad-leafed, and mixed forests, broken only by meadows and savannah-like fields, mountain ranges and huge wetlands, now drained and converted to farmland. The old-growth forests of the past are now typically confined to nature reserves and national parks as hazy memories of long-forgotten European nature mystique. However, in the northern most corner of the EU, a large unbroken belt of old-growth forests remain which until this day is still largely intact – the last outpost of the EU.