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renewal and innovation. Without resilience, ecosystems become vulnerable
to the effects of disturbance that previously could be absorbed.
Resilience in Forest Management
As indicated previously land ownership in the Slovak Republic, is diverse.
In forest land 25.5% belongs to the collective private owners—urbars. They
constitute a form of self-governed historical land co-ownership regime
mainly of forested land and pastures usually within one village.
The name
originally referred to a register of serfs' properties and their respective
duties towards a feudal lord (Štefanovič 1999), created in 18th century for
the use of feudalists' pastures and forests for their own purposes. Gradually,
serfs were freed from their obligations towards landlords. However, they
continued to use pastures and forests and they paid a rent to the landlord
in return. After the abolition of serfdom in 1848 those pastures and forests
were transferred to them in the form of common property from aristocratic
landlords (in 1853) or later (beginning of 20th century) were bought at stock
market as a number of aristocracies bankrupted. Property in the urbar is
inherited from parents to children. Share in the urbar can be sold only with
the approval of the assembly, giving priority to existing members. Two land
reforms undertaken in the 20th century signifi cantly affected ownership
of urbars. First, undertaken at the establishment of Czechoslovakia (1918)
enabled expansion of urbars by transfer of ownership from the aristocracy,
however the second disconnected operation of urbars for more than 40
years by nationalization of private land by the communist government
(1948). In particular nationalization (1945-1990), when land was in the
hands of the state interrupted the inheriting process resulting in signifi cant
land share fragmentation and reduced the sizes of individual shares to
sometimes less than 1 ha. Urbars were re-established in the process of land
re-nationalization initiated in 1993. Urbars are currently regulated by Slovak
Law on Land Associations (No. 181/1995).
In the High Tatras urbars have a significant ownership share in
particular within the core zone of the national park and natural reserves,
including the Ticha valley NATURA 2000 site. However, whoever has the
ownership, experience shows that the success of management depends
on good consultative arrangements and communications between the
managing authority and the other owners, and on satisfactory fi nancial
arrangements for the management of the national park.
To undertake managerial responsibilities, community rules for
harvesting, replanting and self management were developed over time.
Most signifi cantly was the forest degree of Maria Teresa-Austro-Hungarian
imperator, issued in 1767 to manage wood as a strategic resource for
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