Newspaper survey indicates 20% of respondents willing to limit everyman's rights to Finns

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If a survey carried out in the Central Finland newspaper Keskisuomalainen and five other regional newspapers is to be believed, one in five Finns would be prepared to limit the country's everyman's rights - including the right to pick wild berries, mushrooms, and non-protected flowers - to the Finnish population alone.
     
The stiffest "Finns-only" line was taken by people living in the Oulu area and in Lapland, according to the regional dailies' poll.
      The newspapers note that the results could reflect the numbers of foreign berry-pickers who are working each summer in the northern reaches of the country.
      As this paper reported recently, around 2,500 berry-pickers, mostly from Thailand and Ukraine are in Finland this year, collecting bilberies and cloudberries from the forests and swamps.
     
Despite the apparent public taste for restricting the right to pick wild berries, Eki Karlsson, the executive director of Suomen Latu (The Central Association for Recreational Sports and Outdoor Activities), roundly condemns the idea of limiting everyman's rights.
      Karlsson points out that there is in any case no way such a restriction could ever be administered, and removing the right to roam freely in the countryside - where this does not harm the natural environment or the landowner - would also have a damaging effect on tourism.
      Karlsson also notes that people respect nature all the more when they are in more contact with it.
     
There has been some grumbling in certain parts of Finland that foreign berry-pickers, employed by local companies on a piecework basis, are "cleaning-out" favourite haunts, but the general truth is that the vast majority of the produce growing in Finland's woods is left untouched each year.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Thai berry-pickers working all hours to get the crop in (3.8.2010)

See also:
  Dry spell shrinks summer´s mushroom and berry yield (4.8.2010)

Links:
  Suomen Latu
  Ministry of the Environment - Everyman´s Rights (.pdf file)
  Everyman´s Rights in Finland (Wikipedia)

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