Landowners can intentionally impair biodiversity values occurring on their land to pre-empt biodiversity protection. This often leads to significant negative effects on biodiversity. We studied whether landowners in Finland engaged in pre-emptive loggings after they were notified that their wooded mires are candidate sites for a mire protection program. After the notification, harvesting rates of the candidate wooded mires were significantly lower compared to harvesting rates of similar but non-candidate wooded mires. Annual and monthly harvesting rates indicated that notifying landowners of the conservation potential did not launch systematic pre-emptive logging behavior. Nevertheless, part of the candidate wooded mires were logged, so some landowners place more weight on other values than the biodiversity ones. Pre-emptive behavior has been observed in other studies suggesting that many country- or system-specific factors such as cultural background or level of compensation can affect landowners’ behavior.

土地所有者可以故意损害其土地上出现的生物多样性价值，以抢先保护生物多样性。这通常导致对生物多样性的重大负面影响。我们研究了芬兰的土地所有者在被告知他们的树木繁茂的泥潭是泥沼保护计划的候选地点后是否进行了优先伐木。通知之后，候选的树木繁茂的泥潭的收成率明显低于相似但非候选树木繁茂的泥潭的收成率。每年和每月的采伐率表明，通知土地所有者保护潜力并没有引发系统的先发性伐木行为。然而，部分伐木沼泽地被记录下来了，因此一些土地所有者对其他价值的重视程度超过了生物多样性的价值。