"Join in." "At a height of 640 meters on limestone cliffs looms the Spiš Castle, which from the 12th century is protecting the entrance to Šariš and Spiš." "The formal bastion of the Austro-Hungarian Empire is now symbolically protecting the last extensive stands of natural beech-fir forests in central Europe." "For us it´s the gateway to the WOLF Forest Protection Movement, that refuses to accept the destruction of a unique ecosystem of the Èergov Mountains." "Everybody who wants to avoid its transformation into parquet blocks or scraps of paper can buy a tree here for 50 euro." "As a gift to natures vermins you can get a broken or fallen tree for a few euro." "The only "tree eaters" who have access here are insects." "We are questioning the chief of WOLF, Juraj Lukáè and ask how it all began." "My original profession has nothing to do with nature conservation or forestry." "I graduated from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at Czech Technical University in Prague and I worked 11 years as a robotics researcher." "Robotics is really like playing god, where one tries to construct some organisms, which would look like they are alive and would act like they were created by nature or god, if you like." "And at that moment I found out that it's very, very difficult." "And artificialy constructing a centipede or palmerworm is an endless technical problem." "And as time went by through the years," "I began to have enormous respect for everything which was created in those hundreds of millions of years." "Respect for the perfection that we see around us here, and I began to understand that people are not able to manage it, because they did not by far learned about everything what exists around us here." "And so we came to the idea, which would be essentially the best thing we could do for nature, is leave her alone." "Let nature herself decide which tree should die." "Which tree should be born." "What tree species and where should it be born." "Which animal can catch which animal." "And then we got hit by this idea that we should buy some natural forests somewhere and let nature manage and decide as she pleases." "We called this campaign "Buy your own tree"" "because the purchase of a forest is extremely difficult financially, and we had no money." "And so we came upon this idea to sell trees in the newly acquired forests that are to be left to themselves." "Despite the fact that the slovak legislation allows for private natural reserves to be created.." "and we asked immediately after purchasing the forest for the creation of a private reserve, we had to fight years, because the State is always represented by some special interest groups.." "and the state found out that their situation is bad and that there is someone coming with an idea which shatters the standard relationships of wood producing interest groups and instead of the forests being cut down as business as usual," "there emerged this heretical idea that the forests can take care of themselves." "And they even didn´t have to be logged." "And we had to fight years and years so that on our own land, purchased with the money of our supporters, could be created our own private reserve." "We were obstructed in various ways." "But then we´ve put this case to the court and the court fully and immediately decided clearly in our favor, so the Regional Office in Prešov got a court injunction to officially declare the reserve." "So in 2004 our reserve was declared." "But the fight for nature didn´t stop." "Our idea of the autonomy of the forest irritated different interest groups." "Firstly, there are obviously different forestry interest associations which are interested in logging trees for money." "Then there are of course various hunting groups who use the forests in different ways for hunting game and they come up with such diverse pseudo arguments, explaining that nature can not take care of the forest by herself," "that the numbers and species composition of the game must be determined by man, and thus they determine nationwide various numbers of deer, wild boars, wolfs, bears..." "But many different species of animals that hunters still present as hunting game, is under the Nature Conservation Act protected wildlife." "And so at us, who came up with the idea of a private nature reserve... and we expand the idea throughout Slovakia, because we already have forests in western Slovakia, in central Slovakia and also in eastern Slovakia... they pressure us in different ways," "despite the legislation and the de facto situation in the woods, so they could be able to hunt and log also in natural reserves and protected areas." "And so in Slovakia there is essencially hunting and logging going on with the help of various exemptions in all national parks, and virtually all the nature reserves that exist here except our private reserves that we own in Stražov Mountains, in the High Tatra Mountains" "and in the Èergov Mountains." "The pressures against us are diverse." "Since we´ve managed to buy some forests and create private reserves there, now the pressure groups want to revoke the status of a forest as a private reserve." "When we achieved a victory in court - we won 53 lawsuits, where we showed in court that the state violates its own laws by authorizing the shooting of bears and in 53 cases, the court ruled that the permitted kills were authorized illegally " "lobbyist hunters achieved that NGOs in Slovakia have been excluded by law as the main parties in the exceptions permiting process from the Nature Conservation Act." "On the one hand, there is the pressure from various interest groups that are linked up to the highest political spheres, but on the other hand the support from ordinary citizens for our idea of private nature reserves is steadily rising." "And indeed that current support of more than four thousand citizens of Slovakia and several thousand people from abroad, mainly from the Czech Republic still keep us firmly to the idea, maintains our optimism, while creating a counterweight" "against the political pressure that is against us." "Because several thousand supporters have tens of thousands of friends and relatives who know what we do." "And this is really a very solid voter base." "So political parties are beginning to take notice of our activities and they are starting to respect us just because" "WOLF Forest Protection Movement has not only a few hundred members, but our work are supporting in fact several thousand, perhaps tens of thousands of people in different ways." "And that can not be so easily ignored by the pressure groups." "Crossing fingers for the forest warriors is good." "To hug your own tree is even better." "So we have done it ourselves." "Beech-fir forests are unique for the carpathians and once they covered most of the territory of Slovakia, and even the Czech Republic." "And because the beech and fir are economically very interesting trees, where they reach extraordinary dimensions especially in these natural formations, humans have created in the last 100 to 200 years enormous pressure on these trees." "Actually this type of forest disappeared from the Czech Republic and in Slovakia remain only individual fragments." "Indeed this type of forest of this extent is nowhere else to find in Europe except in Romania and Slovakia." "It contains dozens of unique species of trees of exceptional size." "Here the volume of firs is reaching 10 to 20 cubic meters." "Some beech trees as well." "There are beautiful sycamore trees, ash trees." "There are dozens of species of birds that do not live anywhere else." "The number of species of organisms that are here reaches more than 30 000." "And with such forest species diversity the forest can take care of itself, without any human assistance." "And this is his most valuable characteristic." "That the maintenance of a forest requires zero financial and other resources on our part." "On the other hand, this forest provides totally free benefits, which are irreplaceable, and that if we wanted to achieve them, it would cost us billions and billions of euros." "Starting with the removal of carbon from the atmosphere and storing it into the ground and ending with air filtration and stabilization of the climate." "For example the forest where we are now." "The air around us has no more than 18 degrees Celsius, while the temperature in the area outside the forest is almost 35 degrees Celsius." "A layman can be surprised when she walks in our fir forests here in the Èergov Mountains, when she sees in some tree stands huge 40 meters (131 feet) high firs with a diameter greater than a meter (3,2 feet)." "Here she can see ash trees, which are more than 6 meters (19,7 feet) in girth." "On the other hand, she sees seemingly a young forest, with thin beech and fir trees." "But it's interesting, because the seemingly thin beech and fir trees are as old as the great trees and have the same age of 150, some up to 200 years, although their diameter is 10 times smaller than of those large trees." "It's the fact that in those extreme conditions of northern exposure on detritus, those trees grow much smaller than the trees on a nutritious soil in southern exposures." "So the differences in volumes of some same aged trees are very large." "Now I sit in the next section of Èergov Mountains in the valley above the village Hertník which is an area of approximately 500 hectares and is the last remnant of natural fir forest with maple." "The last remnant of this extent in this section of Èergov Mountains." "This is our next goal in saving the natural forests of Slovakia." "And we want to declare a nature reserve here, which would be, if we succeed, an area of about 500 hectares (1235 acres)." "Is a tree that will outlive us by hundreds of years, or to the contrary fall under the roaring chainsaws, an appropriate theme for Christmas reflection?" "Is a living tree perhaps a more important and inspirative gift than those we find every year under our dead christmas tree?"