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be left to natural development only and no felling should
take place. The third achievement was the combination
of forest management planning, monitoring and verifi-
cation, which was developed in 1906 in the Postojna
region by Heinrich Schollmayer. The essence of this
system was to determine the level of allowable cut of a
management unit for a planning period on the basis of
increment calculated as a difference between the change
in growing stock in the previous planning period and
the amount of timber harvested in the reference period.
Growing stock was estimated by measuring all trees
above 10 cm at chest height and the amount of harvest-
ing was duly noted for every compartment. The main
principles of this approach have spread throughout the
country and are still applied in forest management plan-
ning in Slovenia although, for the estimation of growing
stock, permanent sample plots are now used.
The former Yugoslavia adopted the Forest Act in
1947, which contributed to improvement of forests –
especially through the prohibition of clear-cutting and
goat pasturing as well as the requirement that forest
management activities are based on forest management
plans. A clear orientation towards close-to-nature forest
management began in the 1950s with Professor Dušan
Mlinšek who, in collaboration with Swiss Professor
Hans Leibundgut and some other professors of silvi-
culture from Middle Europe, developed close-to-nature
forest management theory further and introduced it
into practice. Mlinšek’s work did not remain unnoticed
in the world forestry community and he became the
head of the International Union of Forest Research
Organizations (IUFRO). The result was the organiza-
tion of the IUFRO Forestry Congress in Ljubljana in
1986 and the establishment of ProSilva Europe, an
international association for close-to-nature forest
management, in Robanov kot, Slovenia, in 1989. These
international events gave impetus to the quality of work
of the Slovenian educational and research institutions,
the Department of Forestry of the Biotechnical faculty,
the Slovenian Forestry Research Institute and the
Forestry Secondary School and Training Centre.
After independence, Slovenia adopted the Forest Act
of 1993, the aim of which is to ensure sustainable, close-
to-nature and multi-purpose management of forests,
long-term and optimal functioning of forests as ecosys-
tems, and to enable their functions. The Forest Act,
the decisive elements of which have so far remained
unchanged, does not only represent the continuity of
traditional forest policy supporting sustainable and
close-to-nature forest management, influenced by the
UN Forest Principles, but also contains some original
approaches in order to meet the requirements of the
market economy.
The basic provision concerning sustainable forest
management which is derived from the Constitution of
the Republic of Slovenia and is particularly important
because of the predominant share of private owner-
ship (78 per cent of forests in Slovenia are owned
by 400,000 private forest owners) is that rights of
that lasted for centuries, where not only the suitability of land for
agriculture had been taken into account, but probably even to a
higher degree the protection function and other environmental,
production and even social functions that forests played in various
landscapes. Many of these functions were early recognized by those
authorities who were in charge of all or more frequently part of the
territory of today’s Slovenia. The first ordinance regulating some
forest-related activities dates back to 1406, while the first request for
sustainable forest management was issued by the Austrian Empress
Maria Theresa in 1771.
In parallel with the aim of ordinances to ensure the sustainability
of the protection function of forests, many forest owners became
concerned about the sustainability of wood supply and income
from forests. In 1770 the first forest management plan to meet these
concerns was drawn up for Trnovo forests and soon others followed.
The second half of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century
were particularly important in terms of the contribution of foresters
in Slovenia to the development of sustainable forest management in
a broader sense. The first achievement, which won a ‘Grand Prix’ at
the Paris World Exhibition of 1900, was the successful afforestation
of the region of Karst, which had been a rocky desert for centuries.
Another was the unique selection system of forest management,
adapted to harsh Karstic conditions, which Leopold Hufnagl devel-
oped and brought into practice through his forest management plan
for the Ko
č
evje region of 1892. It contained a provision, important
from the nature conservation perspective, that several areas should
Image: Lado Kutnar