Ladies and gentlemen, Dear shareholders of the land community, we would like to draw your attention to an article about our community, which was published in the magazine LES & Letokruhy.
Šalková, a district of Banská Bystrica, currently has 1,018 inhabitants. The Šalková Compossessorate and Urbariat Land Association, which manages an area of 143 hectares, has 293 shareholders. As it happens, they are locals and descendants of the original owners from Slovakia and abroad, in this case also living overseas – the United States of America and South Africa.
In the Cultural House in Šalková, I met with the chairman of this forestry entity, Ing. Bc. Ivan Uhrík PhD., the first vice-chairman Jozef Koporec, another vice-chairman Vladimír Helex, the chairman of the supervisory board Vlasta Styková and a member of the supervisory board Anna Matalová. You will be able to read an article about the experiences of forest owners from Šalková in the Non-State Forests section of the LES & Letokruhy magazine.
At the meeting, I was particularly interested in the information that due to the current subsidy sources from the state, the Land Association of the Compossessorate and Urbariat Šalková is trying to look for other forms of securing funds. They are involved in projects, grants and support from calls announced directly by the European Union in Brussels.
They are currently part of the SMURF project. Its main goal is sustainable forest management, economic viability and an effort to build the future of small forest enterprises in Europe. The project is based on the EU Forest Strategy.
„After meeting the set conditions, the SMURF project approved a total of four activities in which we could participate. Last week, we welcomed a group of project representatives as part of the implementation of one of the activities – monitoring of forest land with the creation of ten observation posts. The team leader was Jessica Scriva from Florence.
As for the SMURF project, the second stage called Cascade 2 is currently underway. When Cascade 1 ended with the evaluation conference of non-state forest owners in May 2025 in Rome, participants from all over Europe gathered there.
I was very surprised to hear how forest owners are supported in other countries. For the fact that someone rents 150 hectares of forest and undertakes not to interfere with it, he receives financial support from the state budget.
Or emission allowances. I was told, after all, you also have them in Slovakia and how many of them do you receive as forest owners? I reacted in surprise, after which I received information that the tenant receives a very high amount of money annually from emission allowances to support forest management.
And thirdly – carbon credits. A forest manager has signed a contract with a large multinational company, which pays him funds every year for having signed a contract with it. In it, the company emitting emissions declares that the forest supported by them, within the area, participates to a certain extent in capturing CO2.
This conference opened my eyes and I realized that the legislation regarding the above-mentioned support mechanisms for forest owners was adopted by the European Union years ago, but it has not yet been implemented in our country.
As part of the SMURF project, we had the opportunity to participate in the activity and receive support from carbon credits for our land community as the only ones from Slovakia, but we would have to prove that we are established in drawing carbon credits in Slovakia…,“ says Ivan Uhrík.
In this context, I. Uhrík gives an example of how the state supports non-state forest owners in our country: „The software calculated the amount of support for non-production functions in the amount of EUR 22,000 for five years, but the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development decided that we would receive only 20 percent of the required amount due to the available funds and the consolidation of public finances by a coefficient.“
Jozef Marko
Magazine Editor
Zdroj: https://lesmedium.sk/aktualne/tyzdnovka-ako-nasli-vlastnici-lesov-zo-salkovej-podporu-v-bruseli-a-preco-ostali-udiveni-na-konferencii-v-rime