THE ENVIRONMENTAL Fund will receive an additional €1.12 million to fund work to remove the damage from the Žofia windstorm, the cabinet decided at its June 11 session, as reported by the SITA newswire.
The fund was originally to have €21 million assigned in subventions, which has now been increased due to the natural disaster.
A bora, a specific type of massive katabatic windstorm, toppled almost two million trees in Slovakia and also damaged younger forest vegetation that had been replanted after a 2004 windstorm, when the Tatra Mountains, the country’s most popular tourist destination, saw entire forests levelled. The windstorm that hit Slovakia on May 15 damaged 130,000 trees in the Tatra National Park (TANAP) alone, while 5,000 trees fell in areas with the highest degree of protection.
Even, if the devastation did not reach the scale of 2004’s Bora, which took three million trees in the Tatras, the damage is still considerable. While the 2004 windstorm occurred during the fall, the recent windstorm hit the forests in spring, when animals are raising their offspring, and likely adversely affected birds and a number of other animals, foresters from TANAP explained.
The national park administration estimates that there are 426,000 cubic metres of damaged woods in the areas of TANAP and Chočské Vrchy, Michaela Hančinská, a forester with TANAP administration confirmed for The Slovak Spectator.
Source: SITA
Compiled by Michaela Terenzani from press reports.
The Slovak Spectator cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information
