Sámi sisters lead international effort to protect arctic peatlands across three continents

When Bigga-Helena Magga and her sister inherited their family’s ancestral land in Finland’s Arctic region, they faced a choice: sell it for commercial logging or preserve it for future generations. The Sámi sisters chose conservation, transforming their personal mission into what has become the first Indigenous and community conserved area in Finnish Sámi territory.

Their 21,745-acre site, Alttokangas, sits along the culturally significant Ivalojoki River in Finland’s Inari municipality. The boreal forest and peatland holds deep meaning for Sámi culture and represents a critical piece of the global climate puzzle. Peatlands store vast amounts of carbon in their soils—carbon that gets released when these ecosystems are destroyed or degraded.

The sisters’ conservation work gained international recognition in 2024 when it joined an ambitious cross-continental initiative to create coordinated peatland restoration hubs spanning Canada, the United States, and Arctic Europe. This groundbreaking effort aims to develop shared restoration frameworks that protect the carbon-rich soils while supporting local communities.

The project builds on successful work by Finland’s Snowchange Cooperative, which has dramatically expanded peatland restoration from just eight sites covering 21,745 acres in 2018 to 188 sites encompassing 153,205 acres by 2024. By connecting Indigenous knowledge with modern conservation science, this international collaboration represents a new model for community-led environmental protection that could significantly impact global climate mitigation efforts while preserving cultural heritage.