Slovenia Nature Exchange July 11th- 18th 2009
Saturday 11th July – Arrival & Welcome
 Arrive at Trieste airport and travel to accommodation in Hruskarje for dinner,
discussion of the programme, and objectives of Nature Exchange 6.
Sunday 12th July – Sustainable Development
 ‘Bears Footprints Walk’ - 6.5 km walk from Selscek (Locice) to Bezuljak.
 Walk around Lake Cerknica
 Visit to sheep farm to test homemade brandy
 Visit to Križna cave for a short guided tour.
 Return to Hruskarje via Bloke Plateau
Monday 13th July – Virgin Forest & Dairy Farm
 Visit to Kočevska Reka for tour of virgin forest Krokar, by forester Miriam Mikulic.
 Visit to farm Marolt for milking demonstration and dinner.
Tuesday 14th July – Nature & Walk
 Visit to Lake Cerknica for swim
 Lunch in tourist farm Kontrabantar
 Visit to Rakov Škocjan Nature Park to see small natural bridge.
Wednesday 15th July – Coast
 Visit to Sečovlje Salt Pans
 Lunch in Portorož
 Visit to Piran and swimming in Adriatic sea.
Thursday 16th July – Karst
 Visit Planina Field
 Lunch at Abram tourist farm
 Visit medieval town of Štanjel
 Typical Karst dinner at Štanjel
Friday 17th July – Visit to Pekel (Hell)
 Walk at Pekel waterfall and swim.
 Visit to Bistra Technical museum of Slovenia
 Evaluation of exchange
Saturday 18th July – Departure
 Visit to Sežana botanical garden
 Departure from Trieste airport.
Introduction
This Nature Exchange 6 visit was funded within the framework of the ‘Leonardo da Vinci’
programme of  the  European  Commission  (DG  EAC).  It  was  promoted  by  ARCH  and
hosted  by  the VITRA Centre  for  Sustainable Development. The organisation  is  based  in
Cerknica  in  the  limestone  Karst region  of  Slovenia.  It  is  an  NGO  concerned  with
mobilising local rural resources in a sustainable manner. Vitra are developers of insulation,
heat efficiency panels and solar panels and work closely with Slovenian companies in the
production  of  sustainable  development. They are  valuable  partners  in  the  production  of
international  curriculum,  vocational  training  and  offering  services  to  SMEs  (small  and
medium enterprises) and NGOs in particular, and publishing an environmental newsletter
which is distributed throughout Eastern Europe. The Bears Footprint project has amongst
its  objectives  the  acceleration  of  eco-tourism,  active  participation  on  local  development,
education  of  organiser’s  members  and  residents,  nature  conservation  and  raising  the
quality of living by being more sustainable.
Our  host  Bojan  Žnidaršič  is  the  director  and
founder of Vitra. As well as being leader for the
Leonardo da Vinci programme, he is a lecturer
in  higher  education,  a mentor of  various  study
circles  and  leader  of  a  variety  of  other  national
projects.
Participants numbered five – Dave Hector from
BTCV, Sabine Schamm from National Trust for
Scotland, Mick Blunt from the John Muir Trust,
Julia  Bastone  from  FWAG,  and  myself  also
from FWAG.
Host Bojan on Karst escarpment
From left to right;
Mick, Julia, myself,
Sabine, Tine, and
Dave.
Slovenia’s  size  is  roughly  that  of  Wales,  it’s  population approximately  2  million,  which
makes  it  Europe’s  smallest  country.  Bordering  Italy,  Austria,  Hungary,  Croatia  and  the
Adriatic Sea, the country has been dominated by Germanic and to some extent Hungarian
and Italian influences since the Middle Ages until  the end of World War I when Slovenia
became locked into a disharmonious Yugoslav federation. When the federation began to
fracture in the late 1980s, Slovenia was the first to withdraw – except for the 10-day war
of independence in the summer of 1991, the country emerged generally unscathed from
the tragedies that affected Croatia and Bosnia. It is evident today that Slovenia was one of
the most progressive of Yugoslavia’s former republics, which has aided it’s transition from
communist  to  capitalist economy following  independence  in  1991  (brand  new  cars  and
Beverley-Hills style housing developments were immediate impressions of the country).
Slovenia joined the European Union in 2004 and in 2007 became the first of the ten new
EU member states  to  introduce  the  Euro,  in  doing  so  consolidating  its  place  within  the
wider international economy. Along with Croatia, and discounting the troubles in the early
1990s, Slovenia has always been a popular tourist destination, an industry that it is building
successfully on more and more in current economic climates. It’s greatest asset is it’s rich
variety of natural heritage – it has everything from rich virgin forests around Kočevski Rog
in the south (in fact half of Slovenia’s total area is covered by forest), to the Julian Alps of
the north, to the world famous Karst plateau of the south east (and associated limestone
phenomenon such as the Lake Cerknica to the east and abundant underground caves), to
it’s coastline and salt marshes squeezed between the borders of Italy and Croatia…and all
of  it  so  close  together  that  you  could  be  skiing  in  the  alps  in  the  morning  and  sipping  a
cocktail on the coast in the evening.
It would be a huge task to document the many and varied visits that Bojan escorted us on
during  the  8-day  trip.  This report  therefore  looks  to  highlight  the  visits  that  were  most
memorable,  meaningful  and  thought-provoking  of  the  week,  and  to  draw  comparisons
where possible with issues at experienced at home.
Slovenia’s Underground Landscape
Within Slovenia known caves total 9500, and on average 100 more are found each year.
The visit to Križna Cave on the Monday gave us an excellent insight into Slovenia’s quest
for a sustainable tourist industry.
Known  as  the  Križna Water  Cave,  it measures  8km  in  length and is  one  of  the  world’s
greatest lake caves, and the 4th bio-diverse cave in Slovenia with 47 species of animal being
documented.
The  cave  was  first  documented  in  1832  with  further  exploration  taking  place  in 1926
which lead to the discovery of the chain of 22 lakes, however it is thought that exploration
began as far back as the 16th century as signatures/graffiti found on the cave walls date this
far back. Due to the constant climate conditions (8‰C and 100% humidity) over the last
130 years more than two thousand  fossil  remains  have been uncovered, many of them
belonging to the now extinct and much larger cave bear.
Visitors can opt to take a 1.5 hour, 4 hour or full 8 hour tour of the caves and lakes. In
order to limit the impact that visitors have on the cave, but to provide the opportunity to
educate tourists, numbers are limited to 1,000 annually to take the 4 hour tour and 100
for the full tour.
Very  little development has  occurred  within  the  cave  to accommodate tourists  - visitors
are  expected  to  clamber  over  slippery  rocks  and  walk  on  uneven  ground,  in  the
knowledge  that  they  are  experiencing  a  natural  and  authentic  cave.  It  was  refreshing  to
observe a  country  that  hasn’t  yet been strongly  influenced  by  stringent  health  and  safety
regulation – the visit to Križna Cave, and later in the week to the Pekel waterfalls to climb
steep and loose ladders, was exhilarating!
Slovenia’s Farmed Landscape
It  was  extremely  interesting  to  visit  Anton  and  Pavla  Marolt  at  their  farm  near  Cerknica
where we were thrilled to have the opportunity to  have a go at milking one of their six
Simmental cows.
Slovenian  farmers  have  to  follow  the  same  legislation  (Statutory  Management
Requirements) that British farmers do in order to receive their subsidy from the EU. The
cattle were therefore double tagged for traceability and all farmers are regularly inspected.
Slovenia began to receive subsidies in 2002, two years before it joined the EU. Although
farms also received payments when Slovenia was part of Yugoslavia, these were simply for
The smaller brown bear skull compared with that of the extinct cave bear.
capital  items  such  as  tractors  and  for  new  buildings  – farmers  have  never  been  paid  to
produce,  unlike  in  the  UK.  And  this  is  evident  in  the  rich  biodiversity  of  the  Slovenian
landscape  – it  has  never  been  farmed  intensively  so  the  ancient  woodlands  remain  (as
seen on our visit to Krokar earlier in the day), species rich meadows are in abundance and
watercourses are crystal clear.
I was surprised  to  learn how Anton  and  his  wife made a  living  out  of  simply  farming  six
cows and their calves on 12 hectares of pasture. I learnt that the milk was used to produce
cheese (on-farm) which is sold at a local market (cutting out the supermarket middle-man).
Anton farms organically and receives €2,000 annually for this, which in turn means that he
has  few  input  costs  (no  need  for  inorganic  fertilisers,  herbicides  or  pesticides).  He  also
receives €400 per hectare as a base payment, but more if the land has a gradient steeper
than 35% which is also dependent on height above sea level (again, this system is similar
to  that  in  the  UK).  By  selecting  to use  the  Simmental  breed,  which  produce  20  litres  of
milk  per  day compared with  a more commercial  breed  such  as  the  Friesian  (around  40
litres  per  day),  he  does  not  need  to  buy  in  extra  feed  to  supplement  a  high  input  diet
requirement. Male calves are kept on-farm until they are at least 2 months old when they
are sold on to be fattened for beef production. This in turn generates a subsidy payment of
€190  plus  the  €400  market  price  payment  for  the  calf,  which  is  exceptionally  good
compared with prices in the UK.
Over a dinner of local wine and the farm’s homemade bread and cheese, Anton and his
wife  described  to  us how their  family  have  farmed the same  land  since  at  least  1696.  It
unlikely that the manner in which they have farmed has changed greatly – in a world that
Anton’s milking system which is driven into the field on the back of the tractor to milk
each cow at a time.
has  rapidly  mechanised  they  continue  to  farm  in  an  extensive  and  traditional  manner.
However there have of course been some changes, and similar to the ones we’ve seen in
the UK…
Anton  was  quick  to  point  out  that  there  are  now  only  two  families  in  their  village  – a
massive reduction from the 17 that Pavla remembered living there when she was a child
(in  fact  all  of  the  villages  in  the  area  that  we  stayed  in  only  number  around  5-10
houses/families). Likewise only one of their seven children has stayed at home to work on
the  farm.  Rural  depopulation  is  a  massive  issue  for  Slovenia,  but  unlike  the  UK  where
there  just  aren’t  the  jobs  available in  the  countryside  any  longer,  productive  farmland  is
quickly reverting to scrubland and forest – 30 years ago, 50% of the area around Anton’s
farm was grass. Today it is only 20%.
This trend is in stark contrast to the issues that we face in our British countryside where
we are actively encouraging farmers to recreate the woodlands that were lost during the
time  of  intensive  agriculture  after World War II.  Although  farmers  are  no  longer  paid  to
produce in the UK, it is difficult to break the habitat of belief that land is there to produce a
crop,  even  if  it  is  unprofitable  to  go  to  the  effort  of  doing  so.  This  is  understood  in
Slovenia,  so  much  so  that  the  effect  is  the  opposite  and  great  swathes  of  farmland  are
reverting to scrub.
However, similar to trends in the UK (and the west in general), more and more people
are  buying horses  (and  land)  for  recreation,  an  industry  which  is  known  as  the  ‘new
agriculture’, having grown in the last 10-15 years.
Hillside showing mature forest with young scrub quickly developing between.
Slovenia’s Forested Landscape
It could be argued that Slovenia is one of the world’s greenest countries with 55% of it’s
total  area  being  covered  in  forest. We had  the  privilege  of  visiting  the  town  of Kočevje
where  we  met  forester  Miriam  Mikulic  who  guided  us  through  the  ‘virgin  forest’  of
Kočevska Reka.
The Kočecska region was first inhabited by German settlers back in the 14th century when
the whole area was covered by forest. Areas were cleared for inhabitation but today only
8% of the region is open – the rest forest. In the past farmers were paid to come to the
area to farm it and thus keep it open. Villages have reduced from 33 before the 2nd World
War to just 11 now, with only 800 inhabitants today compared with 2,600 before. Mature
orchards are all that remain of the lost villages (a trend which is similar across the Slovenian
rural landscape).
The region has always been a sparsely populated area due to its poor transportation links,
a  programme  of  mass  re-settlement  of  ethnic  Germans  after  World  War  II,  and  the
closure of 173 km‹ of the region for military purposes following this War, a regulation that
was only lifted after independence in 1991.
This  region  is  in  fact the  only  region  in  Slovenia  where  the  land  still  belongs  to  the
government, and farmers rent it from them. When democracy came back in 1991, most
families claimed back what was right-fully theirs but this was not the case for the Kočecska
region. Nationally  approximately  80%  of  the  forest  is  now  privately  owned,  20%
belonging to the government, however within the Kočecska region only 15% is privately
owned.
Kočevski  Rog,  is  the  country’s finest  uninterrupted expanse  of  forest. It  is home to  all  of
Slovenia’s native mammals, including the brown bear, lynx, boar and red deer, as well as
birds such as  the capercaillie, and is a regional park that hopes to achieve national status
(Slovenia has only one – Triglav National Park in the north west). We visited the forest of
Remnant
orchard with
mature forest
surrounding.
Krokar, with an area of 74.49 ha, it is one of six ‘virgin’ (or ‘ancient’ in British terms) forests
of the region (there 14 in total in Slovenia). Their use in the past has been for hunting only
rather than as a source of fuel for heating or for building materials. Virgin forests are strictly
off limits to the public unless visitors have a guide or hunter to escort them.
The  forest  comprises  80.4%  beech, 12% European  silver  fir,  6.2%  maple,  0.5% wych
elm and 0.2% Norway spruce, 0.2% whitebeam, 0.3% hornbeam, 0.1% ash, 0.1% lime,
and  occasional  goat  willow,  oak and  field  maple.  There  are  on  average 590 trees  (dead
and alive) per hectare, many of which are 400 to 500 years old. Common ground species
include cyclamen, wild garlic, strawberry and blueberry.
Management is minimal – the removal of wood, dead or alive, is forbidden, and instead
the  forest  is  left  to  develop  by  natural  succession,  allowing  mature  trees  to  fulfil  their
natural life cycle and young saplings to take their place in the canopy. Hunting is the only
active management technique. The Minister of the Environment sets limits on the number
of  boars,  bears  and deer  that  should  be  hunted  each  year (for example of  the 500-700
bears  found  in  the  country between  50  and 100 are  culled  each  year). Targets  are  not
often  met however,  which  often  results  in  excessive  damage  to  young  trees  from  over
grazing, especially from deer. However one of the biggest pests is an insect which attacks
the bark of spruce trees, affecting 13,000 mΠnationally when only 54,000 mΠare annually
harvested. Pheromone traps are helping to control damage at Krokar.
It was interesting  to  see  that  part  of  the management to  keep  the  forest  in  its  excellent
‘virgin’  state  is  to  pretty  much  ban  access  by  and  thereby  education  of,  the  public.  It  is
Virgin forest of Krokar
obviously working though, possibly due to the lack of demand in such a sparsely populated
nation,  or  maybe  because  of  the  vast  variety  and  diversity  of  other  natural  wonders
available to visit. Additionally, most of the countryside has an ‘open access’ policy similar to
that  in  Scotland, but  possibly  with  fewer  problems. Stemming back  to communist times,
those in the countryside are used to sharing their land, and a feature that is immediately
apparent when travelling through the countryside is that it is very open – land is farmed in
strips and there are few fences to demarcate boundaries.
Conclusion
The  Nature  Exchange  6  programme  has  provided  me  with  an  excellent  insight  into  a
fascinating and beautiful country, with a wealth of natural landscapes, and hence a plethora
of habitats and wildlife. However it is apparent that such valuable habitats are at risk due to
the issue of rural depopulation and movement of the young to Ljubljana for employment,
although this is obviously not a phenomenon that has gone unnoticed. Organisations such
as  Vitra  are  raising  awareness  and  providing  education  so  that  those  in  power  are
addressing the issues at a local, regional and national level.
The  visit has  enabled  me  to  draw  useful  comparisons  with  farming  and  conservation  in
another  European  country  and  put  the  work  that  I  carry  out  in  the  UK  into  a  wider
context. The experience that I have gained on the visit will be used when advising farmers
and landowners on how to fit habitat management alongside a profitable farming business.
I  will  share  my  experiences  with  my  colleagues and  within  my  organisation; I  will  be
Miriam with pheromone trap
preparing presentations for my colleagues and writing articles for inclusion in our national
magazine which is distributed to our farmer and land manager members nationally.