FAQ
What you should know before you start discussing with WOLF
WOLF Forest Protection Movement. WOLF was founded by a group of forest friends in the eastern Slovak Čergov Mountains in 1973 as an informal group of friends who decided to help the eastern Slovak forests. Depressed by the digging of bulldozers in the most beautiful forests of Slovakia, they discovered that society is organized to produce bulldozers and find work for them. In the forests, they were confronted with the fact that Nature grows forests completely differently than foresters and that the interest of most of our society is the forest dug up by bulldozers. Therefore, VLK decided to follow the path of saving forests grown by Nature, at least in a small area of Slovakia. This radical approach significantly distinguishes it from all conservation organizations not only in Slovakia. In the eighties, WOLF transformed into the basic organization of the Slovak Association for the Protection of Nature and Landscape - ZO SZOPK WOLF. It has been operating as a civic association since 1993. It was registered by the Ministry of the Interior on the summer solstice of 1993. Its goals are formulated in the WOLF vision. Its organizational structure and scope of work are determined by the WOLF statutes. The work of the WOLF is organized in four programs: Let's Save the Forests, Let's Save the Predators, Gaia - Our Home and Abies - Publishing House.
LesNet®. We see the basic problem in different approaches to forests in what is considered a forest. In our understanding, a forest is not a tree stand, it is not just trees, but a connection of hundreds of thousands of species of organisms from the micro level, where there are bacteria, viruses, protozoa, through multicellular organisms, to charismatic megafauna such as wolves, bears, or eagles. The basis for the functioning of such a superorganism as a complex living system is not the food chain, but communication. This communication takes place primarily at the level of chemical signals and primarily in the soil. The several thousand signals identified so far are transmitted over distances of tens of kilometers, while the network topology is scale-free, which means that most nodes have few connections and there are a few key nodes with an extremely large number of connections. The topology of such a network is extremely similar to the current Internet and its predecessor Arpanet. It is very likely that the role of key communication nodes in this network is played by old trees, which we call mother trees. WOLF calls this communication forest network LesNet®, which we have registered as a trademark.
Clearcut. Once upon a time, the word clearcut was only a technical term in forestry and meant an economic method of logging. WOLF introduced this word into the dictionary of the Slovak language to mean a cut-down area of forest without trees.
10% of wilderness. very complex living system, if it is to be stable, must contain two components. A conservative component that maintains effective survival algorithms from the past and a chaotic component that searches for effective ways of surviving in the future in a constantly changing environment. The ratio of these two components is the subject of scientific debate, VLK is trying to achieve 90% of the conservative part that maintains standard procedures tried in the past and 10% of the natural component that responds to environmental changes and constantly seeks new and effective solutions for the survival of ecosystem organisms. This idea most recently received support in the form of 103,782 signatures in the paper petition "For Better Nature Conservation", which the National Council of the Slovak Republic refused to take note of.
Intervention and influence. Terms that even experts confuse. No organism can exist in the biosphere without influencing its surroundings. Intervention is a conscious human activity focused on one aspect of the environment. Therefore, the effects of interference accumulate and their impact is significantly greater than unintentional influence. If a person walks through a reserve, he may inadvertently step on an individual of a protected insect species. This is influence. If a number of pheromone traps are deployed in the reserve, which selectively select one type of organism from the environment and in large quantities, this is interference with the environment.
Non-interference. A term that emerged in the evolution of the Slovak language in connection with the creation of the concept of nature protection. It denotes a method of protecting an area in which a person does not interfere with the environment and does not purposefully destroy or support any organisms. It is an extremely effective way of creating stable ecosystems that adapt to changing environmental parameters thanks to the evolution of organisms and their mutual communication and interaction. It is related to the division of a complex living system into a conservative and chaotic component.
We do not plant trees. We save forests. Planting trees in the forest has proven to be extremely ineffective in forest restoration in the past. A forest is not just trees, but a superorganism composed of hundreds of thousands of species of different organisms. Planting trees tries to return to the system only one species of this complex. The consequence is that less than one percent of the planted trees from the invested seedlings reach productive age, and even then, most of them are in poor health.
Buy your own treem®. A collection through which VLK creates private nature reserves, in which Nature determines which organism will be born and survive and what the ecosystem will look like. The project began in the Jarabinčík Valley in the Čergovské Mountains with the purchase of 21 hectares of fir-beech forest. In this forest, we carry out a full assessment every ten years, which means we record all trees, both standing and dead, register their species and physical parameters. Supporters of the collection can symbolically purchase these trees for €50, pick them out in the field and thus support the expansion of the Vlčia private nature reserve. The project is unique in Europe and the Buy Your Own Tree® brand is a registered trademark.
Gaia. A ten-day field seminar that has been operating since the founding of the WOLF, i.e. for more than thirty years. Its participants sleep in the forest in the wild, under the open sky, without fire, and every day they get to know the natural environment accompanied by lecturers. Days of learning about birds, plants, mammals and the forest alternate with a day of rituals and lectures on complex living systems. These stays are held 3 times a year and it is necessary to register for them in advance. So far, there have been 82 of them and 603 participants have completed them.
Wolf mountains®. Until the sixteenth century, the mountains on the Slovak-Polish border were referred to on maps and in literature as Mons lupi – Wolf Mountains. It was the equivalent of Hic sunt leones – Here are only lions. A text that denoted a desolate, uninhabited territory without people. In our case, inhabited by wolves. After the division of the region into Galicia and Hungary and with the arrival of Wallachian colonization, these mountains were named Beskid (Beskydy), which is Old Germanic border, a word still used in Swedish today. All the mountains, from the Bukovské vrchy to the Moravian-Silesian Beskydy, were Wolf Mountains. The name Wolf Mountains® is registered as a trademark by WOLF.
A new forestry paradigm. WOLF is creating a community of foresters, mathematicians, IT specialists and natural scientists with the aim of creating a new, revolutionary forestry paradigm, built on the idea of LesNet®. The goal is that the viability of each forest would be assessed not on the basis of growing trees, but by examining the communication capacity of the underground communication network, the state of recorded information, the identification and condition of mother trees and other information parameters. Based on the results of this examination, it would then be possible to create modern forest management plans for a period not only ten years, but also for longer periods of time.
Wolves and bears. Throughout history, these beasts have been perceived by the inhabitants of our region as apotropaic animals – organisms that protected people from demons, diseases and evil spells. They were even forgiven for damage to livestock. The situation changed with the advent of Christianity and the arrival of the nobility, who came from areas where these beasts had long been exterminated. Wolves and bears were labeled devils and, on the orders of the Hungarian and Austrian nobility, began to be exterminated by their subjects. Modern biology, in many scientific studies, also proves the practical need for the presence of beasts in our habitats. However, as psychologists suggest, when evaluating these beasts, the amygdala has historically always taken precedence over the neocortex. The wolf has long supported the protection of these beasts in our ecosystems.
Financing of the Wolf The Wolf is not funded by the state, the government or the European Union. We are a volunteer organization and we obtain funds for our activities through permanent small monthly payments from supporters, the so-called 77-crown banknote, through the assignment of 2% of the tax, and we obtain funds for the purchase of forests through the Buy your own tree® collection.
We do Everything for NOTHING!
Important links:
www.wolf.sk
vlci.wolf.sk
medvede.wolf.sk
biomasaker.wolf.sk
ticha.wolf.sk
cergov.wolf.sk
unesco.wolf.sk
www.kupsisvojstrom.sk
www.vsetkoprenic.sk
www.jurajlukac.sk