ABSTRACT
Latvia is one of the only countries in Europe where real forest edges still regularly occur. In most places demands for land and intensive management systems mean that forests start and finish in abrupt lines, often with a fence to drive the point home. The unique ecology associated with the borderlands is forced back into a few nature reserves or to semi-habitats like hedgerows or urban wasteland. But in the Baltic States the unique mixture of forestry and farming has allowed at least some of the woodlands to spread out gently, tapering away into meadow. It is late summer and in this forest edge one elderly couple are assiduously collecting berries: raspberries that come when trees are felled but also many heath species including cloudberries, which fetch a good price in the markets of Riga. The photographer with us goes over and asks through sign language if they would mind him taking a photograph of them. Berry picking looks like a leisure activity but it is quite big business in a poor country; people from Poland and the Baltics now sometimes travel into northern Scandinavia to collect berries for sale.
