High Tatra—The Challenges of Natural Disaster Recovery and Complex Changes - Impact of Global Changes on Mountains: Responses and Adaptation - page 371

same time a challenge for the management of human activities in the High
Tatras.
This natural disaster attracted a lot of attention around the whole of
Slovakia and Europe. The media, the broad public, politicians, specialists,
environmental activists felt the necessity to contribute to the recovery from
this hard trial, to the removal of the negative consequences, and to support
all the necessary steps which are urgently required for the restoration of
the environment in the High Tatras.
In 1995 the responsibilities of the nature conservation in High Tatras
National Park shifted to a new actor, the State Nature Conservancy,
represented by the National Park Administration. However, it acts only as an
advisory body with decision-making powers subordinated to the Ministry
of the Environment (Kluvánková-Oravská et al. 2009). The key decision-
making body in the area of forest management with direct competencies and
legal responsibility to act remains state forest administration represented
by State Forest Company. Thus High Tatras NP is under the management
and responsibilities of two state agencies.
The position of State Nature Conservancy and State Forest Company
varies signifi cantly. The two state actors are guided by different management
plans, forest classifi cation coming from a dual regulatory system (forestry
regulation vs. nature protection regulation). The discordance between
those regulations has been causing diffi culties and coordination problems
in the management of High Tatras. Most critically is the incompatibility of
protection regimes. Forestry management practices, based on production
that is in contrast to the ecosystem approach of conservationists allowing
natural renewal and leaving dead wood in the ecosystem. Contrasting
positions for the type of management and competences in decision making
evolved in open confl icts and communication failure.
The windstorm re-opened discussion on the division of competencies
and future strategic plans for the High Tatras management. Immeditately
after the disaster discussion on the future organization and strategic
development (including dealing with consequences of the windstorm)
started. The community of specialists, representatives of responsible state
bodies, municipalities, forest owners and users and other stakeholders
in the High Tatras area took part in an international conference held in
Zvolen in the Spring 2005 focused on the policy options for storm damage
management in protected areas. This conference was organized under the
auspices of the Slovak Republic Government, FAO and ECE UN. The key
issue became again the question of the type of management, in particular
on the type of forest regime, refl ected already in the research projects
'Processing the windstorm calamity', 'Forest protection project', 'Forest
fi re protection project' and 'Revitalizations of forest ecosystems in the High
Tatras region' (Jankovič 2007, Toma 2009). The Governmental Committee for