Editor's Pages

Editor's Pages

This issue of Insectifera is devoted in large part to compiling what we in the society have gathered regarding the threatened limestone area south of Lake Trösken, 1 mile east of Gävle centre. The threat comes from the many high-speed train alternatives that have been presented in recent years. Some of these alternatives (UaA3, UA4, and UA5) pass through the most sensitive and most valuable parts of the area which has been classified as a "nature area of national interest" by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency.

See further on pages 6 - 35!

The 6th Swedish entomology meeting was held this year in Linköping with our colleagues in the Östergötland Entomological Society. A very pleasant arrangement with much information about, above all, the central Swedish oak landscape. Concerns were raised, among other things, about the availability of truly old oaks in the long term. We have today fairly good access to older oaks with an age of 300 - 500 years. However, in these areas there is a shortage of younger oaks that could secure the availability of old trees 200 - 300 years hence, when our present old oaks have died. Planning is therefore required even now for the protection of, above all, the beetle fauna of the 2300s!

This issue of Insectifera became unusually thick due to the influx of articles and my endeavour to have the distribution maps ready for presentation to Banverket and other relevant authorities before it is time to make a decision on which railway alternative should be chosen. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has helped me with this work and the encouragement that has constantly come to me from the society's members and the residents of Grinduga village.

At the last moment to be included in this journal, I received a document about EU rules and directives from the Environmental Protection Unit of the County Administrative Board in Gävle. Our beetle expert Ulf Nylander has gone through this and reports in an article on pages 36 - 45 on what we as entomologists can now expect with Sweden's entry into the EU.

Particularly interesting was the finding that the EU Council has listed 14 European butterflies "of community interest whose conservation requires the designation of special conservation areas", 2 of these 14 species are found in Sweden! One of the species, the Marsh Fritillary, remains only in a limited area in Västmanland and is under constant monitoring by Claes Eliasson with support from the World Wildlife Fund. See pages 89 - 93! The other species is Euphydryas aurinia, which is still found in a few places in central Sweden. One of the country's finest localities is here in Gästrikland on the border with Uppland, precisely in the area where the proposed UA5 route would be drawn southeast of Lake Trösken.

Euphydryas aurinia is extremely sensitive and with the proposed route would run a great risk of becoming extinct. Naturally, this EU ambition feels like a gift from heaven to us who see with despair how the area is threatened. It would be sad if only my film from 1995 would in the future be the only way to see this beautiful butterfly in the area. Both Korsnäs and STORA have this summer, after information from us, avoided driving their forest tractors where Euphydryas aurinia is found.

Other current issues:

Färsenön (Fjärdsön) in Storsjön, Gästrikland

In our last issue we expressed concern over the forest devastation that was taking place on the completely forested Färsenön in the middle of the western part of Storsjön in Sandviken, incidentally the only uninhabited larger island in Storsjön. We regretted that profit-hunting has now taken such an expression that one must even go out and fell a small forest stand on the municipality's most isolated spot, the little Färsenön. We wondered if this was really necessary and if it could be profitable. We also noted that apparently one had seized upon an attack of wasps on the pines as a pretext to now fell these pines. It seems to have made no difference that the island was a habitat for both raven and merlin, or did the island's many owners believe that the small wasp larvae would eat up "their" pines?

Regardless of the reason for the felling, we believe it is deplorable that one cannot even preserve such a small, relatively undisturbed forest stand in such an isolated place. It is apparently still far for many forest owners to reach the goal of 5% natural forest on their lands. The greed of many will unfortunately likely lead to them never reaching such a goal.

Considering what has happened since our last issue of Insectifera — 2 forest tractors at the bottom of Storsjön and a drowned tractor driver — the mind inevitably turns to the title of Stefan Jarl's old thought-provoking nature film about environmental destruction.

Much can of course be said about the forest felling on Färsenön, but the society, given the very tragic accident that occurred, has decided to refrain from any further comments except that we hope that what has happened can hopefully lead to other questionable clearings on uninhabited small islands in Gästrikland being avoided in future and that the person responsible for the idiotic felling has learned something. He will probably, however, well "fulfil the requirements" for our society's "anti-prize": the "gravedigger prize" which was instituted in connection with the society's "Golden Wing Prize" being instituted for those who have done something positive for the insect fauna in Gästrikland. This gravedigger prize has, however, never yet been awarded even though there have probably been candidates for the "prize" which is to be awarded to those who have most damaged the conditions for a rich insect life in Gästrikland during the past year. Perhaps the name of this "anti-prize" may cause offence. The name was, however, decided several years ago and no one in the society could in their wildest imagination believe that what has now happened would need to occur.

Picture of Färsenön in spring 1995

The previously so compact green, completely forested island now resembles a scraggly collection of trees which like a curtain merely await being felled or blown over. It is so sad! The person or persons responsible for this will, however, also be long dead before the island can look as it did in the autumn before the devastation.

We hope that Fjärdön in Hamrångefjärden which is owned by STORA will not have to meet the same fate as the unfortunate Färsenön in Storsjön.

AssiDomän

In earlier issues of "Insectifera" the undersigned editor harboured some scepticism towards AssiDomän's attitude to the preservation of their "untouched" forests. It is therefore little surprising to read about AssiDomän's felling of previously completely untouched forest at Kokkoma in Pajala in Norrbotten. The area had the character of old-growth forest with plenty of standing dead wood and old spruces.

Deplorable that profit interests/stock market introduction have led to yet another of our shrinking old-growth forest areas being destroyed! It is all too common a sight for us nature conservationists that we come in first when it is time to witness the devastation that these so-called "real jobs" have wrought.

Rumours now also go that AssiDomän will buy Korsnäs. We can only hope that something has been learned from the criticism that has been levelled at some of AssiDomän's clearings and that we can get constructive cooperation even with a possible new owner of Korsnäs. Korsnäs owns, which can hardly escape any reader of this issue of Insectifera, our province's most unique, perhaps only unique nature area, the limestone area south of Trösken.

Our thoughts also go to the Scanian "forest owner" who on TV, to an environmental reporter, answered the question why he had felled a highly protected Scanian deciduous forest with a whole range of threatened insects:

"Well, I bought them, didn't I?"

Insectifera's question: Can one buy life?

Footnote:

The forest in question was purchased with borrowed funds, with the forest as "security". The new "Scanian forest owner" must of course fell his newly purchased forest to be able to pay for it, and the threatened animals he had, as he said, bought! — with free disposal rights?

One recognizes the pattern.

Is there not something wrong with our system of ownership and use? Legislating against such clearings will probably not work. Nor is it desirable with finger-pointing at individual ownership rights and the free disposal of individual assets. The only remedy is probably enlightenment and changed attitudes among forest owners combined with appropriate pressures in the form of publicity and consumer boycotts of products from timber companies that in various ways deal with such timber or wood pulp.

Perhaps one can question the right to buy large forest blocks in order to then immediately fell everything to make quick money. In some reports, particularly on TV, one cannot help but be surprised by the authorities' slack handling of, among other things, the requirement of residence on the property, which is surely the requirement for an acquisition permit?

Well, not everything is gloom and doom anyway. The summer of 1995 became a very fine summer for at least our butterfly fauna which was even noted in TV's news programme. One wonders, however, why RAPPORT, or whatever it was called, showed the African Monarch, Danaus chrysippus, when reporting on all the butterflies here with us in the summer!

The next Insectifera will deal with the fine insect summer of 1995. Perhaps by then we will also have received a decision that Banverket will not forever destroy the conditions for wildlife in our fine limestone area just south of Trösken.

Göran Sjöberg