MARKÄGARE OCH SKOTERTURISM : En undersökning baserad på intervjuer med markägare i västra Härjedalen

This study aimed to examine the possible conflicts between a rapidly growing snow mobile tourism and landowners of the region Funäsfjällen in the west of Sweden, close to the border of Norway. The newspapers of early 2018 was filled with landowner’s complaints about snowmobile users riding in areas where it was illegal and considered destructive by the landowners in big parts of northern Sweden. The landowners of the area of Funäsfjällen now threatened to tear up the agreement they had with the snowmobile trail. The method which was used in collecting opinions from landowners was through interview questions. Furthermore, the report is supposed to describe the current trends in snowmobile driving and sales, as well as describe the forest in the area. The study shows that land owners are overall positive to snow mobile tourism, but still showed that a majority of the landowners had been thinking about the trail agreement, and was prepared to tear it up if they did not see any improvements concerning destruction from free riding. Earlier studies showed that snow mobile sales from the latest years made new records, selling about 2 000 more units than average over the last ten years, where a majority of these were so called mountain snow mobiles, made for climbing steep hills and through deep snow. This study shows that the land owners experience an increase of general snow mobile tourism in the area. An earlier study published in the early 2000 showed that the problematic and destructive free riding had decreased quite a lot since the snow mobile trail in Funäsfjällen was opened. In this study though, it seems as something has changed over time, and the land owners now experience quite a big increase of illegal free riding in the area during the last five years, and that the economic compensation from the trail was not enough to cover the potential costs from the snow mobiles destruction on the land. The study also shows that the type of forest in the area was found to be a low productive one, where felling of trees needs a special permit from Skogsstyrelsen