Nuuksio

Nuuksio National Park was established in 1994 in the municipalities of Espoo, Kirkkonummi and Vihti, barely thirty kilometres from the centre of Helsinki, and covers 55 km². Its proximity to Finland's largest urban concentration makes it the country's most accessible national park and a heavily used space for the capital's population.

The ground is a plateau of fractured ancient rock, with ridges of granite and gneiss, damp ravines, dozens of small lakes and peat bogs set between the hills. The forests are pine on the dry ridges and spruce in the hollows, with patches of broadleaves on the richer soils, and that variety within a small space explains its diversity.

The park's emblematic species is the Siberian flying squirrel, a small nocturnal, arboreal mammal that needs mature forests with hollow trees and continuous canopy in order to glide between them. Finland holds most of the European Union's population, and Nuuksio is one of its southern strongholds; its presence governs forest management in the park and around it. Alongside it there are roe deer, the occasional elk, forest birds and red-throated diver on the lakes. On the edge of the park stands Haltia, the Finnish nature centre, which works as a gateway to the country's national parks as a whole.