The PSKU Šalková Office informs that on May 20-22, 2025, the first pan-European conference of small forest owners was held at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Rome, organized by the Spanish forestry foundation Cesefor and the University of Florence on behalf of a consortium of ten partners from six countries as part of the SMURF project.
„The SMURF project is a European project of forest owners, funded through the Horizon Europe program in the amount of EUR 5.4 million, which aims to support the sustainable management of small-scale forests across Europe. The conference was the place that brought together representatives of small forest owners with representatives of public life and representatives of the academic sphere. The conference was opened by senior representatives responsible for forestry within the FAO, the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Forests of Italy, the Ministry of the Environment of Spain and the European Commission, which underlined the importance and importance of the conference not only for the forest owners themselves, but also for society as a whole. In the introductory block of the conference, the Dean of the Faculty of Forestry of the Technical University in Zvolen, Rastislav Šulek, also spoke with a contribution regarding the current challenges brought by forestry legislation. In his speech, he pointed out the need to implement modern principles of forestry legislation with an emphasis on sustainable forest management, which will ensure the comprehensive provision of forest ecosystem services, as well as the need for legislative support for solving problems of property rights of non-state forest owners in connection with adequate respect for the needs of other entitlement groups.
Rastislav Šulek has been working within the SMURF project since the beginning of April 2025 as one of the eight members of the project’s advisory board. The Advisory Board also includes other prominent experts in the field covered by the SMURF project – Brett Butler from the USA, Diana Lukmine from Lithuania, Andrés Espejo from Spain, Alessandra Stefani from Italy, Marko Maki-Hakola from Finland, Miguel Freitas from Portugal and Roland de Lary from France.
Among the participants of the conference were also us: Ing. Bc. Ivan Uhrík, PhD., Chairman of the Land Association of the Compossessorate and Urbariat Šalková and representatives of the Union of RZVNL Slovakia, of which we are also members.
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