Habitat types under the Nature Conservation Act
The Act currently includes 13 protected habitat types
The Act currently includes 13 protected habitat types, including, for the first time, two submerged marine habitat types. The protected habitat types (Section 64) are:
- sand beaches
- forest stands with deciduous (hardwood) trees
- hazel (Corylus avellana) scrubs
- black alder (Alnus glutinosa) forests
- seashore meadows
- pollard meadows
- dry meadows
- coastal wooded dunes
- inland flooded forests
- sunlit slopes of esker forests
- benthic habitats characterised by Zostera marina
- sheltered benthic habitats characterised by stoneworts (Charales)
- calcareous rock outcrops
The Finnish Supervisory Agency may decide to conserve an occurrence of any of these habitat types that is in its natural state, or in a state comparable to a natural state, and is important for the preservation of the habitat type. The prohibition on destruction and deterioration enters into force once the conservation decision has been notified to the owners and holders of the area.
The Act designates two strictly protected habitat types (Section 65)
- serpentine rocks, boulder fields and gravel deposits
- coastal open dunes.
Occurrences of these habitat types are protected directly by law without the need for a separate conservation decision. The Finnish Supervisory Agency informs landowners of the occurrence of strictly protected habitat types, while the Finnish Environment Institute (Syke) maintains open geospatial datasets on these occurrences and updates them as new information becomes available.