Behind a wire fence outside the northern Finnish town of Muhos, 330 hectares of forest have been reduced to mud, machinery tracks and piles of roots. About a quarter of a million trees stood there a few months ago. The topsoil is gone too.

Finland's Licensing and Supervision Authority (LVV) ordered work stopped at Muhos and at a second site near Otanmäki, about 100km south-east, after finding that the required environmental impact assessments had not been completed before the land was clearcut. The letters went out on 6 October. Google says it halted preparatory works at both sites and has formally responded.

The company's Finland country manager, Antti Järvinen, apologised and said Google had acted "on the best understanding we had of the legislation at the time". A spokesperson said the company has operated in Finland for 15 years and has "always worked to meet or exceed zoning, environmental, health and safety requirements", and that it will fully comply with LVV's requests.

The two sites belong to a €13bn AI infrastructure programme — the largest project of its kind in the Nordic country, and one the Finnish government has courted. Prime Minister Petteri Orpo called attracting investment a "top priority" when the plans were announced in September; after the clearing became public he described what happened at Muhos as a "cold shower".

The local damage is concrete. The Muhos clearcut is 3km long and 2km wide, 400 metres from the Oulujoki river; residents say brown water is running off the site into a stream that feeds it. Ecologist Mari Annala of the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation (SLL) estimates a further 150,000 trees were felled at Otanmäki. Three-toed woodpeckers nesting there have been displaced, and in Otanmäki the wolves followed the prey out of the forest and into the village. "We had wolves coming into the village because all the wild animals moved out of the forest," said Anni Ranta, whose family has lived there for generations.

Google says it plans to plant trees across 130 hectares at Muhos. Conservationists call that too little against 330 hectares stripped.

More than 93,000 people have signed a petition demanding tighter datacentre regulation and a fee to compensate host communities. Finland has 145 further datacentres at various planning stages, drawn by a cool climate, a stable grid and abundant land. Jussi Kangasharju, head of computer science at the University of Helsinki, is blunt about the national ledger: "Really, for Finland, there are no benefits. They are international companies serving international customers. Very little corporate taxes go to Finland."

Datacentres are likely to be an election issue when Finns vote in April. Legally, the case has become a test of a planning system that ran on trust: a company bought land, started cutting, and the permits came afterwards. "It's pure arrogance," said Hanna Halmeenpää, chair of the SLL board.

Sources