It was not better in the past – the history of Hormoslyr in Sweden

Lars Östlund. Professor in Forest History, SLU Umeå. It was not better in the past – the history of Hormoslyr in Sweden.

From the 1950’s and onwards large-scale spraying with herbicides, phenoxy-herbicides “agent orange”, was done in Sweden and primarily in the northern parts. The herbicides were sprayed, by airplane or from the ground, on forest stands with a large component of deciduous trees and was done to produce pure commercially valuable conifer stands. In this presentation I will talk about the history of the use of herbicides in Swedish forestry, the emerging environmental protests against it and the ecological legacy in the forest.