HELP SAVE NATURAL FORESTS – BUY YOUR OWN TREE December 2000

Christmas news for symbolic tree owners

Dear friends of forests and benefactors of the Wolf Reserve,

If you have bought a tree for yourself, given one as a gift or received one as a present, you are just the right addressee of this report. We would like to inform you how the collection has been proceeding, how your trees are and what stage the reserve’s designation process is at.

During the year 2000 the number of contributions reached 1314 and extended to a new, fourteenth country – Norway. The total sum raised is 2,342,000 Slovak crowns, which means we are only missing 858,000 SKK of the total sum of 3.2 million crowns. We are paying for the forest in monthly installments.

Two contributors bravely buy a tree every month and two others pay for their tree in partial monthly installments. Such a way of paying for a tree seems to be less drastic than the expense of one thousand crowns to be paid at once. Thus next year we would like to extend this way of contributing.

Recently we have been really pleased by a contribution from Czech forester, ecologist, teacher and admirer of the Slovak Carpathian Mountains, Igor Michal. He dedicated the whole of this year’s Josef Vavrousek Award, which is given annually by the Charter 77 Foundation for outstanding success in achieving sustainable life on our planet, to the symbolic purchase of 24 trees.

Dear benefactors, we would like to thank you all very much for your help and faith and we wish you, besides other pleasures, many nice experiences in nature in 2001. Heart-felt greetings from all the inhabitants of saved forest and from WOLF’s members,

Dasa Lukacova

"Kind sir, give some pennies for the reserve...." Cartoon: Lubka Dzurikova

How are your trees? Thanks to you they are much better than the others. They are growing nicely and instead of the Forest Management Plan they are enjoying the firm plans of nature. Several firs fell down in the spring wind. They will be left there to enrich the soil with nutrients. Before decaying these laying trees will provide shelter and food for various small creatures. The tallest fir is 34 metres, and the tallest beech 36 metres. The thickest fir is 82 cm in diameter and the thickest beech is 90 cm. It was snowing on 11th November, as is appropriate for this time of year. From time to time wolves dash through our forest and Blair the roe dear is a permanent resident. Owls, woodpeckers and blue tits are thankful for dry standing trees left in the forest.