Google Ordered to Halt Illegal Deforestation in Finland for Planned Data Center
Original title:谷歌为建数据中心非法砍伐芬兰森林 25 万棵树，狼群被迫进村觅食
IT Home, October 24 — In early October, Finnish regulators ordered Tuike Finland Oy, a data center developer owned by Google, to immediately halt illegal deforestation. To build a data center, Google cleared approximately 526 hectares of forest, sacrificing 250,000 trees. The incident quickly drew widespread attention, further fueling European public discontent over the data center construction boom.
On the 22nd local time, the British newspaper The Guardian revealed in its latest report that the primeval boreal forest cleared by Google has turned into a wasteland of mud and tree stumps, forcing wildlife that lost their habitats to migrate.
Near the Finnish village of Otanmäki, after the forest was cleared, wolves lost their natural prey and were forced to seek food in neighboring villages. Anne Ranta, a 53-year-old local resident, told The Guardian: "All the wild animals in the forest have fled, which is why the wolves are coming into the village."
Ranta's family has lived in Otanmäki for generations, but the succession of sudden changes has made her consider moving away permanently. She strongly opposes Google's plan to build the data center: "I don't want the data center built here, nor do I want them anywhere in Finland. I don't buy into the whole concept of AI, I don't like the changes happening to the world, and I especially don't like the world changing this way. Everything is happening too fast and too soon."
Antti Jaakkonen, a resident of Muhos, directly criticized Google's approach. He told The Guardian: "They were wrong from the very beginning—it's entirely the American way. It makes no sense; it's completely absurd."
Similar conflicts are also playing out in the United States, where Google is headquartered. As data center construction continues to expand, the friction between developers and the natural environment has grown increasingly acute, with nature often being the casualty.
In West Virginia, a grove of critically endangered American chestnut trees faces the threat of being bulldozed to clear land for Anthropic's planned hyperscale data center. On the outskirts of Fort Wayne, Indiana, parts of an area dominated by wetlands are being leveled for Google's new data center. Meanwhile, a data center operator in southern New Jersey was fined $1 million (IT Home note: currently about 6.685 million RMB) for operating 62 unpermitted gas generators, which inspectors found were continuously emitting exhaust into the surrounding environment.
Globally, the construction of data centers is almost always accompanied by the destruction of natural resources, and it is becoming increasingly difficult for the public to turn a blind eye to their environmental costs.
Related Reading: "Finnish Forest 'Shaved Bald': Google Illegally Clears 250,000 Trees to Build AI Data Center"
Why it's worth reading
This report concretely exposes the escalating ecological footprint and regulatory backlash facing tech giants as data center land grabs collide with local ecosystems.