Nature protection and biodiversity - Why care? (Estonia)

Compared with other territories of similar size situated north of the 57th parallel, Estonia’s biological diversity is one of the richest. This is due both to varied climatic conditions, a variety of base rocks with correspondingly diverse soil conditions, and also a low and polarized human population density – rather more than 30 inhabitants per km² with two thirds in urban and one third in rural areas. This allows nearly half of the land to be covered by forests, where almost 1 000 lynx live, more than 500 brown bears and nearly 200 wolves, as well as other mammals.

One of the highest diversities of small-scale species per square meter has been found in wooded meadows close to the west coast of mainland Estonia. Such semi-natural habitats, including coastal meadows, wooded meadows and alvars that are still well maintained, are valuable both because they contain a high diversity of species and because they show that humans can live in harmony with nature. Due to the existence of these habitats, Estonia has been a valuable stepping-stone for hundreds of years in the migratory routes of large numbers of bird species.

However only a little more than half of almost 40 000 living species that are thought to be represented in Estonia have so far been recorded. The last evaluation, in 2008, of the threats to Estonian species found that 1 170 species are threatened in various ways and almost 1 % of known species are already extinct or nearly extinct. There has been a steady increase in the number of Red Listed species since 1978.