Malá Fatra National Park has the least state ownership of all Slovak national parks, only ten percent. It is also among the three parks furthest from zoning approval. According to Gabriela Kalašová, director of the Malá Fatra National Park Administration, non-state owners do not agree with the zoning, but it cannot be done without them. Therefore, the national park wants to allow the owners to hunt in the new non-intervention areas, which would be on non-state lands.
“We can also say from a professional point of view that ungulates are overpopulated and cause great damage to forest stands. It is also about dampening the predators of the deaf, such as the marten and the fox. If we were to evaluate the impact of hunting as serious on the subject of protection, we would certainly disagree, but we see it this way,” says Gabriela Kalašová.
In the interview you will read:
- whether Malá Fatra has enough preserved forests that could be in the A zone;
- whether they can guarantee hunting to owners;
- how are the endangered capercaillie and grouse doing and what is the biggest problem for them;
- how they want to adjust ski mountaineering in the national park from next winter.
You have been the director of the park administration for a relatively short time, since last fall, until then your husband was the director. Did something catch you by surprise that you had to deal with?
I have been working on the administration of the national park with breaks since 1999, I was more or less oriented in the issue. I was surprised by the robustness of the operational and economic agenda, which is related to the change of the national park into an independent legal entity. Until the start of the reform, this service was provided by the headquarters of the State Nature Protection in Banská Bystrica.
A year has passed since the launch of the national parks reform, how would you evaluate it?
I consider decentralization to be a very important benefit of the reform, which allows us to focus on local issues in the region. The intermediate link in the communication between the national parks and the Ministry of the Environment, which was the mentioned state nature protection, was removed.
Where does the national park get its income from?
We have money from three sources: the state budget, environmental fund, European fund projects. In our case, our own resources are very limited. We are a national park with the highest proportion of non-state ownership, we do not have a large area of forest to manage and we do not have large revenues from logging.
If the zoning of the national park, which is now being prepared, were to be approved, the state lands with the 3rd degree of protection, which are currently managed by the state foresters, would also pass under you. Would it help in solving the financial situation?
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