Miranda Bryant in Muhos and Otanmäki   October 22, 2026

Behind a wire fence lies a vast gaping wound of earth. Before Google’s arrival a few months ago, an estimated quarter of a million trees occupied the 330 hectares (815 acres) of forest near the town of Muhos in rural northern Finland. Now they are all gone.

After the tech company illegally stripped the entire area to build a datacentre – taking even the top soil with it – all that remains is a vast expanse of mud indented with the trail marks of machinery, puddles and mounds of earth, roots and branches. Residents say that brown water flowing off the site is going into a stream that feeds the Oulujoki River.

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In addition to the 250,000 trees felled at Muhos, Annala estimates that an additional 150,000 trees were felled at Otanmäki. Because the trees have been felled illegally, she says wood from the two sites cannot be sold to wood-processing plants.

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Hanna Halmeenpää, chair of SLL’s board, said she had been incredulous when she discovered Google’s law breaking. “At first I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “I have never heard that any company has done anything like this in Finland.” She said the system depended a lot on trust, which she believes Google took advantage of. “They bought the vast land area and they just started to cut it, just like that,” she said. “It’s pure arrogance and it’s amazing.”

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Antti Jakonen, who lives in Muhos, said that, although the trees felled represented a small fraction of Finland’s overall forests, he objected to the manner in which it had been carried out. “It has been done in the wrong way. American style. No sense. No sense at all,” he said. The former entrepreneur and fisher wants Google to compensate by helping to restore the local salmon population destroyed decades ago by hydropower.

In Otanmäki, the disruption to nature and to residents’ daily lives is being vividly felt. When the trees were felled, the wolves who had lived there came to the village, said Anni Ranta, 53, whose family has lived there for generations.

A former mining village, the area is known for its rare earth elements. Ranta’s family live at the centre of the village next to a triangular church spire and a former bar that has been empty for years. The peaceful forest used to extend for miles from the village. Now the sound of building work next to the clearcut Google site reverberates.

“We had wolves coming into the village because all the wild animals moved out of the forest,” said Ranta. “They fled. What worries me about the datacentres is also the noise because this is hardrock soil. Even when we are standing here talking,” she added, stamping her feet, “it’s like a drum.”

Read full report at URL below:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/pure-arrogance-anger-finland-google-112223961.html