Parks

Slovenia. A biotic park

The country is known for pristine wilderness areas. Natural heritage in Slovenia is protected either as a national park, a regional park or as a nature park. Slovenia has forty-four areas of protected parks, one national, three regional and forty landscape parks. Protected areas are; Triglav National Park, Kozjanski Park, Škocjan Caves Park, Sečovlje Salina Nature Park, Goričko Nature Park, Notranjska Regional Park, Logarska dolina Landscape Park. Sečovlje Pans and Cerknica Lake are included on the Ramsar List of Wetlands of International Importance.

Forests cover 58% of the national territory. Slovenia has a tradition of forestry management with forestry plans first made in 1770. The predominant trees are beeches, oaks, linden, and in the moutains there are the spruce, pine and fir. The country’s fauna includes: deer, boar, hares, foxes, badgers, squirrels, wild cats, lynx, jackals, wolves, bears, owls, eagles, storks, marmots, ibex and chamois. Slovenia is home to more than 15,000 animal species and 3,200 plant species or, at least to every hundredth known living species.

The Environmental Agency of the Republic of Slovenia has the important mission for environmental protection to preserve natural resources, biotic diversity and to ensure sustainable development of the country. Slovenia adopted the program Natura 2000 which is the center piece of EU nature and biodiversity policy. Slovenia has designated 286 Natura 2000 sites: 260 according to the Habitats Directive and 26 according to the Wild Birds Directive. The sites in total encompass 36% of the country, which is the highest (terrestrial) rate in the EU. The Natura 2000 sites were adopted by the Slovenian government in 2004. The role of the European Commission's leading Environment Directorate-General is to initiate and define new environmental legislation and to ensure that agreed measures are put into practice in the EU member states.

Learning activities

1. Write directions to the park
Text-type: map, instructions, diagram
Linguistic element: proper noun, pronoun, compound sentence
Trace the route from Ljubljana on clickable map to Arboretum Volčji potok
http://www.arboretum-vp.si

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