Out of the 28 million hectares of woodland in Sweden, around 25% is exempted from forestry. An additional 8% is also set aside when felling managed forests.
Formally protected forests
There are many kinds of protected forests in Sweden. We have 29 national parks, more than 4100 nature reserves, over 7500 biotope protection areas and 5000 conservation agreements.
Voluntarily set-aside forests
Forest owners that are certified by FSC and/or PEFC (Swe) have committed to set aside 5% or more of the productive woodland. Voluntary set-asides and key habitats cover almost 1.5 million hectares of the Swedish forest, fragmented on several hundred thousand areas of varying size.
Unproductive woodland
Unproductive woodland means forest in areas where the combined growth undercuts one cubic metre per year and hectare. These areas are valuable to the green infrastructure, the biodiversity, and other eco system services and are exempted from forestry in accordance with the Forestry Act.
Find the protected forests
The interactive map voluntary set-aside forests gives a general overview of the voluntarily set-aside forests in Sweden. You can also filter on different kinds of protection.
