Yet the agency also has a stake of its own in the disputes, because the
Conservation Frame of the ENGOs implies problems for the operations
of Metsähallitus. The timber harvesting plans of the past century have
been based on the premise that all publicly owned forest would be
available for timber production. This reflects the common informal
norm in Finnish forestry called maximum sustained yield, which maintains
that it is as important to avoid under-harvesting as it is to avoid
over-harvesting of timber (Jokinen and Holma, 2001, see also Fréchette
and Lewis, 2011). As increasing amounts of mature forests have been
designated as protected areas it has created a gap in the harvest cycle.
Due to past application of the norm of maximum sustained yield, there
is little flexibility in the planning system to accommodate requests to
exclude forests from timber production. Any additional restrictions to
forestry risk resulting in decreased harvest levels, decreased revenue
generation and in the worst case, reduction in Metsähallitus' staff. The institutional
legacy has, to use the language of rational choice institutionalism,
created strong collective and personal incentives for the forestry
planners to minimise the amount of set aside areas.