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Unfortunately, there is nothing to brag about. 
The negative impact that people have on the environment is so great that rare positive changes and actions go virtually unnoticed. 
GARBAGE
It is amazing where and how much garbage people leave in nature. It is especially stupefying today when garbage disposal is so well organized. However, people do not take those options, but rather, sometimes with extra work and transport, take it into nature, as if it will magically disappear.

It is thrown mostly near trails and crossroads, around springs and wells, into ravines and thickets. It is depressing that that is also done by people who should be taking better care of nature, and they are hikers and forest workers.

SEE THE PICTURES !

WATER
Once clean natural springs that flow into the vilage haven't been for drinking for several years now. To blame are garbage, lack of a sewage system and chemicals in farming.

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CLEARING OF LAND

Because of the construction of houses, vacation cottages and paths land is being mercylessly cleared.

September 2006. 
I went for a walk and I came to the crossroad of paths towards Lipa, Vugrovec and the top of Bedenik (from Vugrovec) and experienced the greatest shock in my life. The path has been widened and the surrounding trees have been DESTROYED! There is no more shade along the entire path, no bird could be heard (all fled because of the work, otherwise there would've been tens of them every metre)! An old tree stump in which water collected for deer (which I cleaned every year) is destroyed! The cut trees around the path look like a battlefield and the workers even left behind their garbage!

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FIRE
Once every couple of years firemen have to intervene in the near area because of fires that have gone out of control (burning of weeds on meadows).

 

Example of the consequences of one such unintentionally caused fire, caused by carelessness and ignorance.

SEE THE PICTURES ! 

HUNTING
Sadly, these shooting stands aren't used for photography, but by hunters. We can often hear shots fired in the distance and we find the remains of the shot animals. Based on the feeders, with wich they lure their innocent victims, hunters here hunt deer, pheasants and wild boars.

We do not understand how is it possible that in the 21st century it is legal for people to walk around the hills with rifles and shoot. We are worried for us, our dog, for our friends and neighbours and especially for the animals and we condemn this in its entirety.

People that are ready to kill a living being for sport or fun are people with dangerous intentions.

SEE THE PICTURES !

LIGHTING AND NOISE
Electricity is slowly being introduced, and with it street lights, and that disrupts a lot of night time animals, for example: fireflies, moths,...

People use massively a lot of noisy machinery: mowers, generators, sprayers, cars, tractors. That disruts the animals in their normal comunication, calling, hunts, and bothers nature lovers in their experience and relaxation.

In the last 30/40 (from the '70-ies onwards) a great change in the flora and fauna is observed.

In the floral world, nature is taking back what was taken on the plots where no one has come for several years and haven't been maintained. These plots slowly become meadows with bushes, then thickets and forests.

The fauna world the biggest changes that happened (and are still happening!) are in the frequency and places some animals are encountered and to the complete cessation of encountering certain species (extinct?).

Amphibians probably suffer the most. I remember that when I was 3 or 4 years old I "chased" tadpoles in a stream that flowed under our cottage. Closing that spring for the village water suply, the stream stoped. The tadpoles were no more. When I was 5 or 6, I "jumped" after a Green Tree Frog (it got away in some crab grass, it's the only one that I ever saw there). Somwhere around 2001. we saw the first and only Agile Frog. In 2004. we found 4 Fire Salamanders, in 2005. only 2.

Concerning reptiles, the number of snakes has fallen greatly from the '70-ies to today). I talked to the people there in regards to that and they said:"...before there were a lot more of 'em and there were animals 2 m in length...". Number of snakes decreased in the last 30 years. Older people often mention the snakes were often bigger then today. Currently there are 4 species here: Aesculapian Snake, Grass Snake, Smooth Snake and the Nose-horned Viper. There is a small chance that there were also Dice Snakes (Natrix tessellata tessellata- one neighbour claimed he killed an "Adder" (there are none there, not even in the whole NP Medvednica!) which had a broken up zig-zag and that he measured it. It was over a meter, and Adders reach a maximum of 80 cm!), but I haven't been able to confirm that.