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Abstract
The ongoing Forest Biodiversity Programme METSO largely relies on voluntary participation
of family forest owners. In the METSO programme, forest owners have the power to decide
upon conservation, in contrast to traditional top-down programmes. Forest owners can get
advice and information about conservation practices from a wide range of forestry and
environmental professionals, who should help owners to make decisions that respond to their
values and needs. The study at hand examines the present situation of how the nature values are
taken into account in advisory services in Finland. It was designed based on soft systems
methodology (SSM). Semi-structured interviews and observations of actual service encounters
in forest were conducted in seven practical organizations. Qualitative analyses of the material
helped to compile and combine conceptual models of the present state and observe tensions
between actors’ purposeful action models. METSO programme’s voluntary-based conservation
agreements and forest owners’ ability to make initiative about conservation, has been accepted
positively among forest owners and authorities. Nevertheless, nature values planning and
conservation depends a lot on the actors’ and organizations’ worldviews and operational
practices, which could lead to a situation where forest owners get different kind of information
and guidance depending on organizations they were contacted with. Nature values conservation
is not yet fully internalized and knowledge about different voluntary conservation alternatives
varies among actors. There is an obvious need for trainings, guiding material and practical
decision-support tools for introducing nature values conservation alternatives.