3. Healthy and living waters

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Undisturbed forest with dead wood provides healthy living water

Surface water and groundwater benefit from conservation old-growth forest.

Nutrients and heavy metals remain in the soil instead of leaching into rivers, lakes and seas. Road damage in forests doubles the leakage of mercury into rivers and lakes, resulting in unacceptably high levels in inland fish, and coastal Baltic fish, especially predatory fish such as pike. This in turn leads to elevated levels of heavy metals and environmental toxins further up the food chain in birds of prey, seals and humans, among others.
There is twenty times more dead wood in old-growth forest than in industrial forests. Dead wood from untouched old-growth forest contributes to a living ecosystem when it falls into watercourses, which become better habitats for the reproduction of wild salmon, for example.