Biodiversity impact indicators

High stumps are trees cut at a few meters’ height to increase the amount of standing deadwood, helping restore more natural forest-like conditions in managed landscapes.

In Finland, our practice is to create at least two high stumps per hectare in all harvesting, and we report our performance on final felling sites. If there is natural deadwood (10 trees / ha), we preserve the existing deadwood instead of creating new high stumps. In 2025, this was realized on 95% of the audited sites. We managed to greatly improve our performance in comparison to previous years, and will thrive to improve even further with increased communication and training within operations.

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Deadwood is one of the most integral forest elements for enhancing biodiversity, which is why our forestry measures include careful preservation of existing deadwood on the ground. 

In 2025, our performance increased from previous year, but is still below our target level. Continuous efforts in operations planning, as well as noticing and marking deadwood on site are crucial to improve our performance. In addition, communication and training with our contractors remains a key in preventing damages to ground deadwood. 

* In 2021, the indicator included also standing deadwood. To get more detailed data, standing deadwood has since been surveyed separately.
** During 2021–2023, we reported the indicator on a site-basis: number of approved sites / number of all sites with deadwood. In 2024, we changed the reporting to monitor the number of deadwood logs. The change is part of our harmonisation across countries.

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Soil and water constitute important habitats for versatile species living on land and in water, which is why we protect soil and water when crossing watercourses as well as avoid soil damages close to water.

In Finland, we measure how well this has been achieved on sites where there has been a need to cross the watercourse. In 2025, waters were protected or crossings avoided on 96% of our randomly sampled sites. While the overall performance is at a high level, our target is to have reach and maintain a 100 % result level on our operations. 

Learn more about soil and water

Prioritised habitats contain especially high nature values, requiring particularly careful protection. They do not occur in many forests, which is why their number in our data is small. Our main action is to preserve all prioritised habitats that are identified in the forests where we operate.

In 2025, this was realized on 94% of our sites in Finland, which means there has been a positive trend over the years. While this was a significant decrease from past years, the overall performance is still at a high level. We investigate each deviation, it's severity and root cause to further develop our practices, aiming for increased performance. 

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Retention trees are living trees left after harvesting to support biodiversity over the forest regeneration phase.

Our target is to leave at least 10 living retention trees per hectare in harvesting. In 2025, this was realized on 86% of our final felling sites. The average number of retention trees was  over 15 per hectare, meaning that many sites exceeded the target and some were below.

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Riparian buffer zones are areas left around waters and wetlands to protect biodiversity around the water and sustain good water quality, as buffer zones protect the water from sediments and erosion. 

In Finland, we leave riparian buffer zones that are at least 10 meters wide on average, with the minimum requirement of 5 meters everywhere. In 2025, this was realized on 95% of our sites where water bodies required a buffer zone. To improve, we put increased focus on buffer zone planning by developing the use of digital mapping tools as well as on training of personnel and contractors.

 * In 2021, buffer zone preservation was not reported as a separate indicator.

High stumps are trees cut at a few meters’ height to increase the amount of standing deadwood, helping restore more natural forest-like conditions in managed landscapes.

In Sweden, our practice is to create at least three high stumps per hectare in harvesting, and we report our performance on final felling sites. In 2025, this was realized on 89% of audited sites, which shows we have remained stable over the years but remain slightly below the target.

Learn more about high stumps

Deadwood is one of the most integral forest elements for enhancing biodiversity, which is why our forestry measures include careful preservation of existing deadwood on the ground. 

In Sweden, we preserve natural deadwood logs that have a diameter of at least 15cm and have been dead for more than a year. Our monitoring is focused on the amount of observed logs that have not been damaged. 90% of the evaluated logs in final fellings were preserved in 2025, showing a return to performance level before 2024, but we still need to focus on deadwood preservation to maintain and increase our performance.         

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Soil and water constitute important habitats for versatile species living on land and in water, which is why we protect soil and water when crossing watercourses as well as avoid soil damages close to water.

We report how many sites have required water crossings and how many of those have not had an impact on the watercourses. In 2025, the result was 80%. To improve, we continue to focus on a special forest machine driving technique, developed by us to avoid soil damages.    

* During 2021–2023, we reported the indicator on a crossing-basis: number of approved water crossings / number of all water crossings. In 2024, we changed the reporting to monitor the number of sites that have water crossings. The change is part of our harmonisation across countries.

Learn more about soil and water

Prioritised habitats contain especially high nature values, requiring particularly careful protection. They do not occur in many forests, which is why their number in our data is small. Our main action is to preserve all prioritised habitats that are identified in the forests where we operate.

We report how many sites have contained prioritised habitats and on how many sites we have avoided damage to the habitats. In 2025, the result was 100%. This is a major improvement in comparison to previous year, and it is a clear sign that our training and feedback both to our personnel and contractors has been effective.

* During 2021–2023, we reported the indicator on a habitat-basis: number of approved prioritised habitats / number of all prioritised habitats on the audited sites. In 2024, we changed the reporting to monitor the number of sites containing prioritised habitats. The change is part of our harmonisation across countries.

Learn more about habitats

Retention trees are living trees left after harvesting to support biodiversity over the forest regeneration phase.

In, Sweden, our target is to leave at least 10 trees per hectare in harvesting, and we report our performance on final felling sites. In 2025, this was realized on 94% of the sites, meaning that there was a slight decline in comparison to previous years, which we aim to rectify to maintain our high performance rates in the future.

Learn more about tree retention

Riparian buffer zones are areas left around waters and wetlands to protect biodiversity around the water and sustain good water quality, as buffer zones protect the water from sediments and erosion. 

In Sweden, we leave buffer zones according to the forestry best practice, where the width of the zone depends on the site. For instance, we leave wider zones if the surrounding forest is wet or has higher biodiversity values.

We report how many sites have contained water bodies that require buffer zones and on how many sites we have preserved these buffer zones correctly. In 2025, the result was 90%. To improve, we continue monitoring our performance as well as training and giving feedback to our personnel and contractors.

*  During 2022–2023, we reported the indicator on a buffer zone-basis: number of approved buffer zones / number of all buffer zones on the audited sites. In 2024, we changed the reporting to monitor the number of sites containing water bodies that require buffer zones. The change is part of our harmonisation across country units.
** Buffer zone preservation was a new indicator in 2022, and hence comparison data from 2021 is not available.

Learn more about buffer zones

High stumps are trees cut at a few meters’ height to increase the amount of standing deadwood, helping restore more natural forest-like conditions in managed landscapes.

In the Baltics, high stump creation is not part of the current practise due to the high amount of natural deadwood. Based on our monitoring in 2025, the amount of all natural deadwood amounted to 12.4 dead trees per hectare. This indicates that deadwood doesn’t need to be created on all sites, but we should focus creating high stumps on those sites where standing deadwood doesn’t occur naturally.

We have piloted high stump creation in the Baltics and in 2025 monitored 33 sites where there was not enough natural standing deadwood (less than 5 trees / ha). 27 sites were approved (82%) and six had room for improvement. On average, we created 1.99 high stumps per hectare on sites where there was not enough natural standing deadwood.

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Deadwood is one of the most integral forest elements for enhancing biodiversity, which is why our forestry measures include careful preservation of existing deadwood on the ground. 

 In 2025, our performance increased to 98%, which was a major increase in comparison to previous years. Our aim is to keep our performance at a high level also in the future. 

* During 2021–2023, we reported the indicator on a site-basis: number of approved sites / number of all sites with deadwood. In 2024, we changed the reporting to monitor the number of deadwood logs. The change is part of our harmonisation across countries.

Learn more about deadwood

Soil and water constitute important habitats for versatile species living on land and in water, which is why we protect soil and water when crossing watercourses as well as avoid soil damages close to water.

In 2025, there were no sites in our audits in which water was crossed. Our audit sites are selected at random, which means that due to relatively small sample size, no sites with crossings were audited. However, based on previous years’ performance, we continue to collaborate with our harvesting partners, communicate actively with forest owners, and provide trainings both for partners and employees to continuously improve our performance.

* During 2021–2023, we reported the indicator on a site-basis, meaning that we reported the amount of sites with no damage close to water bodies / number of all sites with water bodies. In 2024, we changed the reporting to monitor the number of sites that have water crossings. The change is part of our harmonisation across countries.

Learn more about soil and water

Prioritised habitats contain especially high nature values that require particularly careful protection, such as areas inhabited by endangered species.

Prioritised habitat preservation is not reported for the Baltics: due to their scarcity in the forests overall, we have been able to focus harvesting on areas where there are no prioritised habitats.

Learn more about habitats

Retention trees are living trees left after harvesting to support biodiversity over the forest regeneration phase.

In the Baltics, we aim to leave at least 10 retention trees per hectare during final fellings. In 2025, the required amount of retention trees were left on 96% of the audited sites, indicating an upward trend throughout the years.

Learn more about tree retention

Riparian buffer zones are areas left around waters and wetlands to protect biodiversity around the water and sustain good water quality, as buffer zones protect the water from sediments and erosion. 

In the Baltics, we leave buffer zones to protect waters, in line with legislation and our company guidelines in each country. The number of these areas in our sample pools is quite small, as our operations in the Baltics are mostly done away from waterbodies. In 2025, there was only one audited site with buffer zones, which is why the performance rate is marked as NA in the table below.  

* Buffer zone preservation was a new indicator in 2022, and hence comparison data from 2021 is not available

Learn more about buffer zones