In Sweden, there are approximately 570,000 kilometers of state, municipal and private roads. A large proportion of this is forest roads, more precisely 215,000 kilometers according to the Norwegian Forestry Agency. It is more than twice as long as the national road network and the expansion of new roads, to get to the forest to cut down, is going fast.
The expansion of the forest road network is driven by financial reasons and has become more short-term.
In recent years, the felling rate in Sweden’s forests has set new records. The trees are falling faster than ever in our forests. The expansion of forest roads has also increased significantly. During the period 1995-2006, approximately 1,600 km were built per year. In 2021, a total of 3,000 km were built according to the Forestry Agency’s report “Current description of individual roads with a focus on forestry transport” from 2023. It is a distance equivalent to driving from Sweden’s southernmost point to its northernmost point – round trip.
Large environmental impact
These roads have a major impact on nature, but also on waterways and increase the risk of drought.
– A road has a significant environmental impact when it is built but also during the entire life of the road. Infrastructure fragments the landscape and affects biodiversity. Roads can change the movement of water in the landscape, drying out certain areas while other areas receive a concentration of water via ditches. Road culverts can be obstacles to migration and prevent fish and other aquatic organisms from moving in the water system. Ditches can also negatively affect water quality in natural waterways if they are designed in the wrong way, writes the Forestry Agency in the report.
Avoided by forest birds
Previous studies have shown that roads affect forest-dwelling birds more than previously thought. The forest birds prefer to avoid flying over roads, which creates a network of obstacles in the landscape for them. A Swedish study from 2019 concluded that infrastructure, such as roads and railways, affects birds and mammals even from afar. At least 1 km from a road, there can be 20-30 percent fewer birds. With 215,000 km of forest roads, this means hundreds of thousands of square kilometers with greatly reduced bird fauna.
These forest roads are not used as often as the rest of the road network, but the transport of approximately 71 million tons of unprocessed tree biomass per year amounts to a whopping 280 million vehicle kilometers according to the Norwegian Forestry Agency. That corresponds to 7,000 revolutions around the earth.
Read more about forest roads
Source: The Norwegian Forestry Agency
