We at Finnature have made a difficult decision: we will not continue arranging the popular set-departure Birdwatching excursions in Oulu and Kuusamo anymore. This also means we will not have set-departure self-drive birdwatching tours available anymore.

One-day Birdwatching excursions have become very popular and important also for us, but at the same time the world has changed. Over the decades, we at Finnature have put up hundreds of nest boxes and built a lot of nesting platforms for Owls and other birds – especially in Oulu area. This has been possible to do with the financial support of the people participating to our Birdwatching excursions and we are convinced that this activity has helped birds enormously in Finland’s commercially harvested forests.

But unfortunately, nowadays it’s far too easy to mark the exact location on the phone and it’s far too quick and easy to spread the information via eBird or similar apps. It also seems that people don’t realize how huge risk sharing the location data is to sensitive bird species!

In recent years, we have witnessed people, and even groups, coming to the sites on their own because someone had shared the information in internet. It is clear to us that if the location spreads widely and a lot of people visit the nesting sites uncontrolled, it is a threat to the welfare of the breeding birds.

So although one-day Birdwatching excursions have been very popular, we are sad to tell that we cannot offer them anymore. The welfare of the birds is essential for Finnature. We always control the amount of people and their behavior visiting at the sites through us. When the site becomes public, we can no longer guarantee the safety of the birds.

Instead, we have limited dates available for Private birdwatching excursions in May and June 2025. By ending set date departures for one-day Birdwatching excursions, we limit the number of people visiting at the sites and we believe that on private excursion we can explain this issue more deeply to our clients. We believe that people attending to private excursions are less likely to spread the location information.

We trust that our actions show our effort to save the breeding birds and especially Owls from disturbance. We are going to keep on putting up nest boxes and building nest sites for Owls and other birds in Oulu area.  We will continue to organize private tours and longer birdwatching tours together with travel agencies. And we truly hope that this will be enough, but if we notice in future that the information still spreads, we may have to reconsider our products again.

Kind regards,

Jari and Kaisa Peltomäki

Owners of Finnature