Clearcut tourism : a framework for a forest regeneration initiative based on sustainable forestry and public participation involvement

Abstract: Swedish forestry (and forestry in general) is a long-term investment that should last through generations. Some generations are only putting in the money to take care of it and not seeing much profit. Sometimes there is a point, where an individual landowner decides, it is time to get at least some income by clearcutting the forest. The state and other marketing systems convince landowners that clearcutting is the only economic harvesting method (Swedish Forest Industries, 2022), whereas the wood from a young and severely thinned forest will never be equal to the quality of wood that an older tree can provide which has been chosen carefully to be felled. Clear-felled forests create enormous scars in the landscape, leave animals without shelter by separating them from their habitats, and the carbon that has been tied down in the forest’s carbon sink gets emitted to the atmosphere, pushing us ever so closer, little by little, to a drastically changed climate that is not suitable for us nor most species on Earth. To create a positive change, we must depend on individuals, such as forest owners and their willingness to protect nature as best they can by using their resources. This master’s thesis explores the possibility to create changes that all matter in protecting our natural values. The thesis offers a framework for landowners to change their ways of forestry in order to gain income from sustainably controlled tourism by letting tourists help regenerate forests on a heavily thinned or clearcut area without creating a nature reserve, thus being able to practice forestry in a more environmentally friendly manner. Some landowners buy the land already bare, and some just want to change their ways of harvesting. Allowing tourists to plant the forest themselves will automatically create a connection between them and the land, which is often missing in our forever rushing and digital world. This prospect is briefly explored in this work through literature study and results from questionnaires. By letting the public plant the land, the landowner not only receives labour from them, but through the experience, they get environmental education that can only come from first-hand knowledge. The result of the thesis will present comparisons between potential changes in the landscape, should this framework be realised.