Slovenia has the third largest percentage of forest cover in Europe behind Finland and Sweden. Unlike these and other heavily forested countries, including its neighbour Austria, forestry is not a major industry.

The emphasis is on recreation, close-to-nature forestry – known as continuous cover forestry (CCF) in Ireland – and forest protection.

The forest estate comprises private ownership (75%), state ( 20%) and mainly community forests (5%).

The Slovenians identified forest deterioration around the same time as Ireland when we introduced the Dublin Society – now the RDS – State-private afforestation initiative in the mid-18th century.

The Slovenians first produced management plans as early as 1770, as outlined by Professor Janez Pirnat at the department of forestry and renewable forest resources, University of Ljubljana. Large-scale afforestation programmes were carried out in the Karst region in the 19th century.

Mining led to a decrease in forest cover but Slovenia still had 36.4% forest cover by 1875. While the country experienced forest decline during the 19th century, it was nowhere near as dramatic as other European countries.

The Slovenians actually increased forest cover from the late 19th century and by 1947, over 43% of the land area was under forest. Incremental increases of 2% every two years resulted in close to 60% forest cover today.

The relationship between forest owners and the Slovenia’s Forest Service is close, which is important as the average private forest size is 2.5ha, so these forests are fragmented. However, private forest owners combine to form co-operative-type structures.

The Forest Service provides a free service to private forest owners in developing their 10-year forest management plans, as well as providing a free tree marking service.

Species diversification

Most countries in Central Europe and the Nordic region depend on Norway spruce as a major species in construction, panel board manufacture, engineered wood, energy and other uses.

As a result, they have built an industry often based on this species. While Slovenia has 377,600ha of Norway spruce, it has no plans to develop a major international-scale wood processing sector around the species.

The opposite is the case, as it plans to virtually phase out the species.

The aim is to reduce Norway spruce from 32% forest cover to 8%, according to Prof Pirnat.

While this is a long-term target, it illustrates the direction forestry is taking in Slovenia, which is the direct opposite to most other countries in Europe and North America.

While Norway spruce covers close to one third of the forest estate, fir, pine and other conifer species account for 18%. Beech is the dominant broadleaf at 31% with oak (7%) and a wide range of broadleaves forming the balance of what is an extremely diverse species mix. Broadleaves including European maple, sweet chestnut and hornbeam are widespread.

As we drove from the lowlands to the high mountain range of the Julian Alps, other conifers came into view most notably European larch and silver fir.

All species are indigenous, apart from some excellent Douglas fir and eastern white pine.

Broadleaves such as black locust and red oak were introduced, but these are negligible in numbers.

Slovenians have enjoyed free access to forests since the late 19th century. Every city, town and village in Slovenia has a recreation forest within walking distance. Slovenians are happy to sacrifice economic and productive goals for recreation and wellbeing.

A visit to the urban forest at Celje – 80km, northeast of Ljubljana – illustrates the importance of recreation forestry to the 2.1m Slovenians.

The trails and signage in this forest are impressive – not too much information but enough to explain the forest ecosystem and to promote forestry as a recreational resource.

Play areas

Directions are clear, while play areas are a welcome distraction for children as is the massive tree house – the biggest in Slovenia.

Made from locally sourced Douglas fir, it is used as a theatre, workshop, and for poetry evenings and concerts.

The walk is promoted by the Coronary Club of Celje, an association that organises forest walks and other activities for people recovering from heart surgery.

Forest cover is almost 60% (11,800km2) of the total land area (20,271km2) in a country about one third the size of the island of Ireland.

With such a huge resource, it was surprising to learn, that forestry hardly registers as an industry.

The country has no major sawmills, wood-based panel mills, pulpmills or biomass plants of international scale compared with other high forested countries in Europe.

According to the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), the annual increment in Slovenian forests amounts to 9.49m m3 while 7.17m m3 is the allowable annual harvest, although this is rarely achieved.

“For example, in 2021, only 4.07m m3 of woodstock [was] harvested in Slovenia, which is about 57% of possible allowed cut for that year,” according to the FSC.

Total processing output is modest but increasing from 1.5 million m3 to 2.1 million m3 recently, according to Vesna Nahtigal, general manager of Slovenia’s chamber of commerce and industry at last year’s annual Days of Slovenia Wood event.

Criticism

The main criticism levelled at the sector during this convention was the need to add value and export-finished products rather than logs.

Slovenia exported 362,000m3 of softwood logs to Austria in 2023, compared with 252,000m3 in 2022. Slovenia also exports hardwood including 279,000m3 of beech, mainly to Italy and Austria.

While the government encourages Slovenians to support the indigenous timber processing and manufacturing sector, there is no need to promote a domestic firewood usage campaign. Slovenians are big users of firewood. Hardly a house, we passed in small towns and rural areas, hadn’t well-stocked open sheds stacked with seasoned firewood. Any efforts by the government or EU to curb this traditional practice have been strongly resisted.

Last January, the Slovenian government abandoned plans to ban the installation of wood biomass boilers after an intense pro-firewood campaign led by opposition party New Slovenia.