Borearctia 

First about the story behind the name. Borearctia comes from the Latin name of a rare tiger moth Borearctia menetriesii. You can see it on our logo. The etymology of the name is in the Greek language; “Boreos” refers to the word north and “arkteia” to arctic. “Menestriesii” refers to the French entomologist Édouard Ménétries. As we work with nature, the company name matters!

Borearctia was established in 2018 by two professional biologists. Nature has always been our passion. In fact, we have been working with nature for all our working life. In addition, Borearctia has also a pool of other nature experts who can guide the groups depending on the theme tailored for the group.

Marita Arvela (main owner of Borearctia) is responsible for the nature tourism activities. She will be your contact point when you send a message to Borearctia or call.

Since a little girl I knew that I wanted to study biology. So, at the age of 19 I moved 600 km from home to start studies in zoology in northern Finland. Finland is a big country, so good to explore also other parts of it! After finishing my master’s degree I was teaching biology at schools and worked in the environmental administration before an interesting job offer took me abroad. First to Belgium and then to France. For 20 years I worked with a wide spectrum of very interesting tasks of species and habitats protection at the EU level. It is these years abroad which strengthened my understanding on the nature values of Finland, and made me dreaming about small scale nature tourism activities in Finland.

Sometimes one has to go far to see near!

In 2021 the owners of Borearctia protected their Kultsurova forest of 97 ha in Lapland.

This old-growth forest locates close to the Alpine region and is dominated by Scots Pines (Pinus sylvestris) and Mountain Birches (Betula pubescens var. pumila). Only a handful of Spruces (Picea abies) can be found here. It is now a privately owned nature conservation area according to the Finnish Nature Conservation Act. It means that the forests, Aapa mires and springs continue to develop naturally.

Kultsurova is known for its dense Capercaillie population (Tetrao urogallus) and other representative avifauna!