About 50 experts searched Syöte National Park for 24 hours in August. More than half of the species they found had never been recorded in the area before.
829 of the species are new to the area and 107 are on Finland’s Red List. Among the rarest finds were two lichens, one of them critically endangered.
Around 50 species experts searched Syöte National Park and the Syöte recreation area from 12:00 on 14 August to 12:00 on 15 August 2026. The 24-hour event, a BioBlitz organised by Metsähallitus Parks & Wildlife Finland, aimed to find 1,000 species, and the final count published in October was 1,549.
Fungi: 285 species, more than in any earlier Metsähallitus BioBlitz. 94 of them were polypores and 191 mostly gilled fungi, and 170 are new to the park.
Lichens: 192 species, 25 of them threatened.
Mycologist Tapio Kekki says the summer had no long dry spells and enough rain. Fungi other than polypores had been studied very little in Syöte before, so many of the species found were new to the park.
In an old spruce forest on the slopes of Sotivaara, a lichen called sauvaneulajäkälä in Finnish grew in abundance. It is classified as endangered, and in Finland it has been found at only a few sites before. Lapinnyppyjäkälä, a critically endangered lichen, was recorded in North Ostrobothnia for the first time.
According to Sampsa Malmberg, a conservation specialist at Metsähallitus, the observations can be used, for example, when planning how the area is managed and used.
Syöte National Park was established in 2000 and covers about 300 km². It lies in Pudasjärvi and Taivalkoski in North Ostrobothnia and in Posio, which belongs to Lapland.
Lapland’s national parks, and the villages to base yourself in for each, are on our national parks page.