On 16th January at the annual Finnish Sports Gala in Helsinki, Metsähallitus was granted a special award for designing facilities that encourage people to enjoy outdoor activities in natural settings across Finland. Metsähallitus provides and maintains free facilities that make it easy for visitors to Finland’s national parks and other beautiful natural areas to get out into the wilds. These facilities include attractive visitor centres, websites with useful practical information, and trails totalling 6,738 km – almost six times the length of Finland.
Metsähallitus manages all of Finland’s 37 national parks and many more of the country’s best loved natural attractions. To encourage everyone to explore these natural wonders, Metsähallitus Natural Heritage Services designs, builds and maintains unobtrusive and ecologically sustainable facilities that can be freely and safely used by all kinds of people.
These facilities include well maintained hiking and skiing routes with a total length of 6,738 km, more than 3,000 picnic sites and shelters, and more than 2,000 eco-toilets and waste collection points. The areas managed by Metsähallitus Natural Health Services annually welcome around 4.8 million visitors who come to enjoy physical activities including walking, trekking, canoeing, rowing, swimming, riding, snowshoe-trekking and cross-country skiing.
“This is all highly significant in terms of promoting public health,” Metsähallitus’s director general
Jyrki Kangas explained on receiving the award at the sports gala. “Research findings have shown that in addition to improving people’s physical fitness, outdoor activities in natural areas can also reduce stress, lower people’s blood pressure, and improve their powers of concentration.”
“The routes and other facilities we provide are also carefully designed to ensure that nature does not suffer even in our most popular national parks,” added
Rauno Väisänen, director of Metsähallitus Natural Heritage Services. “This is also important for our visitors, since their unspoilt natural scenery is what attracts people to these areas. This award gives welcome recognition to the work of our staff – and to the efforts of Parliament, the Ministry of the Environment, and the Ministry of Forestry and Agriculture, who all oversee and fund this work.”
Two attractive new centres
Metsähallitus also runs 24 visitor centres around the country. These centres provide visitors with a wealth of information about nature, and also serve as gateways to nearby natural areas. Two important new centres will complement this network.
The Finnish Nature Centre Haltia, currently under construction on the fringes of Nuuksio National Park about 25 km northwest of Helsinki, aims to present the best of Finnish nature and encourage visitors to go on to explore the great outdoors. The Pilke Science Centre, which recently opened in the heart of Rovaniemi, the capital of Finnish Lapland, will also serve as a meeting place and a fount of information about nature. Both these new centres have been imaginatively designed to fit into their respective settings by applying innovative timber construction techniques.
Metsähallitus also runs two special websites designed to encourage and help users to plan trips and outdoor activities by providing all the necessary practical information. The English versions of these sites are at outdoors.fi and excursionmap.fi.
Athlete of the year
At the sports gala the prestigious Finnish sports personality of the year award was presented to world champion ski-biathlonist
Kaisa Mäkäräisen, who has been sponsored by Metsähallitus. “We’ve been supporting Kaisa for many years, since we’ve been keen to back athletes who set an example that encourages people to get out into our forests,” says Jyrki Kangas.
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