The genetic conservation of forest trees in Finland started as a project in the Finnish Forest Research Institute in the early 1990’s. The first gene reserve forest was selected in 1992. The National Programme on Plant Genetic Resources in Agriculture and Forestry (in Finnish:
www.mmm.fi/el/julk/pdf/biotek_kasvikg.pdf ) was published in 2001. This programme defines the targets and  the general organisation for the management of genetic resources, covering agricultural and horticultural plants as well as forest trees. The responsible organisations are MTT Agrifood Research Finland together with Metla (Finnish Forest Research Institute)  and the work  is supervised by the Council on Genetic Resources in Agriculture and Forestry. As a core task, the forest gene conservation programme has established in situ  networks of gene reserve forests for all the main tree species and dynamic ex situ collections for the scattered tree species.