Support

Biodiversity in habitats created and maintained by agriculture are home to wild species of animals, plants and fungi that have benefited from traditional agriculture. The most significant reasons that have led to the endangerment of species and habitats are mainly related to the restructuring of agriculture. 93% (37 pcs) of the habitat types of the traditional biotopes has been classified as endangered. Every tenth Finnish species is endangered. 22.3% of endangered species live in semi-natural biotopes. In 2011, support for the management of semi-natural biotopes was paid for 21,403 hectares. The contract industry has decreased in recent years. Finland's actions to improve biodiversity are based on the EU biodiversity strategy until 2020 and the national strategy for the protection and sustainable use of biodiversity based on it. The strategy and the supporting action program implement the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The fight against introduced species is based on the national intrudouced species strategy and its action program.

The promotion of the rural landscape is in accordance with the European Landscape Convention. According to the monitoring data of common land birds based on pan-European line counting, the bird population of Finland's agricultural environment has declined significantly. Bird indicator monitoring of the agricultural environment using the mapping method mainly gives a favorable picture of the development of birds in agricultural areas.

The indicator describing the change in the amount of agricultural land with High Nature Value (HNV = High Nature Value) is a scoring system in Finland, where a reference value is calculated for each farm. HNV agricultural land relative share of the available agricultural land has decreased as livestock farming has decreased and the grain cultivation area has increased. The value of the indicator was 9.7 in 2007 and 7.9 in 2010. The indicator is suitable for identifying a subset of the farms with the most valuable nature values, but not for valuing all farms based on nature values. (Rural development program 2014-2020, p. 51). In Europe European Forum on Nature Conservation and Pastoralism works with high nature value farming, You find examples of these areas in their homepage High Nature Value Farming.