In addition to years of excessive logging, Estonia’s natural environment is under pressure from large-scale national defense, industrial and infrastructure projects, which are currently being planned at an unprecedented scale. These include, for example, the massive Rail Baltica corridor and military training areas spanning tens of thousands of hectares.

One of the harshest examples is the Nursipalu training area, established in southeastern Estonia in a region with some of the country’s greatest natural value — a so-called core area that provided habitat for at least 47 rare and protected species. It is clear that in the current security situation, the state must enhance its defense capabilities. However, given the extreme impact of human activity on Estonia’s nature, the damage to biodiversity caused by such developments must be compensated for.

Principles of compensation defeat the purpose

When a large artificial structure replaces a rare natural habitat, compensation areas — new protected zones — are established nearby to allow nature to recover and provide rare species with a new habitat over time. Since the areas offered as compensation typically lack the ecological value of the destroyed habitats, larger areas must be allocated to offset the loss.

For instance, through expert knowledge and thorough analysis, 7,206 hectares of new nature reserves were identified to compensate for the habitats destroyed in Nursipalu. The same approach applies to Rail Baltica. However, the State Forest Management Center (RMK) logged nearly 200 hectares of Rail Baltica compensation areas, earning it and the Environmental Board’s forestry department the title of “2024’s Most Environmentally Damaging Act.” This highlights that protecting compensation areas is already problematic and proposed legislative amendments would exacerbate the issue further.

The planned amendment to the Nature Conservation Act sets a cap of 30 percent for Estonia’s protected terrestrial area, including all compensation areas such as those for Nursipalu and Rail Baltica.

This seemingly innocuous provision undermines the fundamental purpose of the Nature Conservation Act — to protect nature. This is because designating compensation areas would necessitate the removal of existing functioning nature reserves to remain within the 30 percent limit.

In the end, not only are nature reserves in the locations of nationally significant projects lost, but compensating for them requires downgrading existing protected areas. Together with the newly designated compensation areas, these zones would no longer fit within the 30 percent limit.

Most valuable natural rarities to go unprotected

Species in the first protection category are those that are endangered or rare in Estonia. This group includes all eagle species and the black stork, whose nesting trees are surrounded by a protective buffer zone with a radius of 100-250 meters, referred to as a permanent habitat. The proposed legislative amendments would nullify these permanent habitats if a detailed plan or activity permit — such as a clear-cutting notification — was initiated in the area before the nesting tree was discovered.

Previously, if an eagle nest was found during logging, the work had to stop immediately and the logging permit was canceled. The new amendment, however, would allow logging to continue within the rare bird’s habitat, leaving only the nesting tree intact.

Since first-category birds are particularly sensitive and selective about their nesting sites, they abandon nests left standing in clear-cut areas — no eagle, no problem. Moreover, clear-cutting is permitted in private forests even during the spring breeding season, which would inevitably lead to the destruction of eagle or black stork nests found during this time. Protecting the habitats of first-category species is a fundamental principle of conservation, yet the Ministry of Climate appears to be dismantling this with the proposed amendments to the Nature Conservation Act.

Behind this amendment lies the interest of the forestry industry. Eagles and black storks nest in old-growth, ecologically valuable forests, yet outside protected areas, forests older than 120 years make up less than 2 percent of the landscape. The amendment would allow industrial exploitation of these unlogged but unprotected natural forests — even if they host the nests of globally rare species such as the greater spotted eagle or the critically declining black stork.

Due to high logging pressures, forest biodiversity is rapidly diminishing. The permanent habitats with protective buffer zones for eagles and black storks are biodiversity hotspots in unprotected forests. These areas not only support nesting birds but also serve as habitats for many other species dependent on similar conditions.

A University of Tartu study revealed that even in abandoned black stork habitats, hundreds of species from the Red List of threatened bird, plant and fungi species were still present. Protecting such abandoned nests is vital to maintain biodiversity in heavily exploited landscapes and to improve the populations of critically declining first-category species.

“How can the recovery of a species’ population (achieving favorable status) be possible if suitable habitats are not preserved?” asked Climate Minister Yoko Alender (Reform) in an August statement advocating for the protection of uninhabited permanent habitats. To ensure the minister does not have to contradict her own words, the draft law must be revised to guarantee that first-category species’ habitats remain protected even after an activity permit or plan has been initiated. Without this, any recovery in the populations of critical species would be impossible.

If the current legislative changes proceed, the state will disregard its responsibility to preserve its natural heritage. With Estonia’s forest biodiversity in decline for decades, the slow but steady degradation in the name of industrial advancement will only deepen. To prevent this, the Nature Conservation Act must be strengthened, not weakened in favor of industrial interests.

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