Browsing by Subject "ongelma"

As farming has become more intensive, pasturing of traditional rural biotopes has decreased. At the moment all forest pastures are regarded as endangered biotope type in Finland. Currently many species living in them are also endangered. Therefore, restoration and management of traditional biotopes is important. There is special support payment scheme to the land owners for management of traditional rural biotopes which is the most important form encouraging this work. Farmers are the most significant group managing traditional biotopes, so their willingness for management should be increased. Knowledge about nature and farming, attitudes towards them and economic situation of the farm influence farmers’ environmental care. In this study we tried to find out, what problems owners face when managing traditional forest pastures, why do they stop applying for the support and how farmers would like the support scheme to be improved. For a survey we sent 264 questionnaires to land owners who receive the special support for managing traditional rural biotopes in Central Finland, Satakunta and Finland Proper. We received 69 answers. The biggest challenges turn out to be the amount of work, possible sanction, ban of extra fodder, amount of support, ban of fencing traditional biotopes with sown grassland and application process. How much a possible sanction was perceived as a challenge depended on a living region and a challenge of ban of extra fodder and co-fencing depended on a kind of grazing animals. Giving up farm/animals, authority/bureaucracy and too much work were the main reasons to quit management. Most common proposals for improvement were increase of support, moderation of terms of the support, easing of management, simplification of applying papers and increase of guidance. According to this study, the special support and therefore restoration and management of traditional biotopes can become more appealing for farmers if the amount of support would better reflect the amount of work, actions of the authorities would be more consistent, application process for the support would be easier and allowing extra fodder and co-fencing would be considered under special permissions.