The 16-hectare Tapiolanvainio forest in Kokemäki is an exceptional place with a primeval touch, acquired by the Finnish Natural Heritage Foundation at the end of March in 2015. The majority of the deal was financed by the Satakunta district of the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation with the help of a will left by Arvi and Eija Laaksonen. The same will enabled us to purchase the Tapiola forest in Noormarkku during the course of 2010–2011.

The place was originally called Vainio, named after an unconnected plot of land nearby. It was owned until 1976 by a man named Matti Anttila who had come into possession of the area in 1935 once his mother’s great family estate was parcelled out between the heirs. Matti Anttila was a great forest lover who regarded this heartland as a personal landscape that should be left intact. It is unusual to find a forest that is in its natural state to the same extent as the Tapiolanvainio forest.

Since the type of the terrain varies quite a lot, Tapiolanvainio lays a foundation for a variety of forest habitats. By the eastern edge, there is an exuberant watery hollow with cliffs and crags of jagged rocks rising out of the hollow towards the west, the southwest, and the east.

The tree stand ranges from the common alders of the hollow and the spruces of the heaths to the pine trees standing on the bare tops of the hills. There is decayed wood appearing in great amounts, also in the form of heavy trunks lying on the ground and dead spruces still standing in the forest. The bird population nesting in the area includes species of old spruce forests, some of them more and more rare, such as the three-toed woodpecker. Tapiolanvainio has also become a home for the Eurasian pygmy owl, the Eurasian wren, the common treecreeper, and the black woodpecker.

In addition to the multitude of springs, there are swamps developing on the ground, both contributing to the diversity of the area. The brook running through the watery hollow was once exposed to shallow digging, but it has since started returning to its natural state.

Tapiolanvainio is the 49th conservation area of the foundation and the fourth one in the Satakunta region.