The Association of the Slovenian Forest Owners got established (ZLGS)
Ljubljana – At its Foundation Assembly, the Association of Slovenian Forest Owners (ZLGS) got established to gather forest owners at the national level and to represent their interest in Slovenia and abroad.

This was enabled though 11 local forest management associations’ joint efforts and the support of many public and private stakeholder organisations of the Slovenian forestry sector. As invited guests, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Management of Croatia, the Chamber of Agriculture and Forestry of Styria in Austria and the Confederation of European Forest Owners (CEPF) addressed the meeting and assured their specific support to the new organisation.
In fact Slovenia has been one of the few new EU-members without organised private forest owners at national level.
In Slovenia 75% of the forests belong to private owners totalling in 800.000 hectares and 350.000 forest estates. Farmers own at the average 5.1 hectares of forest and non-farmers 1,7 hectares. Only 100 estates are over 100 hectares in their size as the vast majority of the estates are smaller than 1 hectare. In the country are yearly some 3 million m3 of wood harvested, which is right below the annual yearly increment, meaning further intensification of the harvesting is possible.
There must be further efforts done in wood mobilisation and the extension and capacity building of forest owners. This can be underlined through the fact that Slovenia has the highest accident rate in forests in Europe relating to 100.000 m3 harvested wood.
Mr. Andrej Berdajs, the elected president expressed in his addressing speech that the ZLGS work program aims therefore at:
Promotion of the local cooperation of forest owners
Assistance in forest management to private forest owners through advisory services
Assistance of private forest owners in capacity building
Participation at national forest policy setting as national level representative of private forest owners
Consolidation of the hunting right attached to the land property
The Assembly elected also the Board of the association and its other bodies, such as the Supervisor Committee, and the Council of the establishing local forest owner associations.
Mr. Joze Jeromel and Mr. Rajko Strefanic got elected as vice-presidents. As Secretary General of the Association Mr. Joze Mori got assigned.
It was commonly expressed by different board members that the national association intents to act as partner to national forestry bodies and other stakeholder groups, in particular the national forest administration and farmer organisations and that it will contribute to Slovenia’s successful EU membership.