: Impacts of Nature and landscape protection Act on forest management in Slovakia

: ABSTRACT Nature conversation policy in Slovakia is focused on territorial and species protection. Nature protection is regulated by the Nature and landscape protection act. This regulation framework also affects forest policy and applies to forest management. The implementation of nature protection has a cross-sectoral character and oftentimes restricts forest ownership rights. Therefore, the scientific goal of the paper was to analyse the impact of specific legislative changes of the Act on Nature and Landscape Protection on forest management practices. We analysed 36 essential amendments to this act, defined the changes, and described their impact on forest management or owner. The most amended part of the act was the implementation of mandatory compensation payments for legal restrictions and forest management regulations at individual levels of nature protection. The most current amendment has changed the administration of national parks, which mainly affected state-owned forest land.

: KEYWORDS Forest policy, nature protection, cross-sectoral impacts, compensation payments : 1 INTRODUCTION The country's historical, political, economic, and social factors influence forest management.The events after 1989, when Slovakia started its separation from Czechia and formed an independent state, radically affected the field of nature protection among others.The most significant change was the creation of a separate Ministry of Environment in 1992 and introduction a new Act on Nature and Landscape Protection nearly ten years later (Burkovský, 2006).
Nature and landscape protection is secured in Slovakia by territorial and species protection.The dominant form of protection is the territorial protection provided through the system of protected areas.Species protection is applied irrespective of the type and category of the protected area, i.e., applies throughout the whole territory of Slovak Republic.Protected areas are divided into "National Network of Protected Areas" and "NATURA 2000 areas".These areas make up almost 50% of the forest area under the management of state forest enterprise Lesy SR.Compared with the whole Slovak territory, protected areas cover more than 23% of it.It means that almost one-quarter of the Slovak territory falls within areas with some nature and landscape protection.
With such an extent of protected areas, the Slovak Republic is at the top of all European countries.In other European countries', areas of nature and landscape protection are much smaller (Forest Europe 2020;Šulek and Šálka, 2007).
Restrictions on forest owners' rights in the protected areas arise from the nature protection law and cause a discourse between forest and environmental stakeholders.
This currently points to the more than twenty-year struggle of non-state forest owners in the Slovak Republic for proper compensation for the restrictions on forest management due to nature protection requirements (Šálka et al., 2015).The Nature and landscape protection Act tries to solve this issue through environmental policy instruments (Kovalčík et al., 2012).
We consider Act No. 543/2002 Coll. on Nature and Landscape Protection, as amended, the most important law outside the forest policy.Therefore, the paper aims to analyse the impact of specific legislative changes of this Act on forest management and forest ownership rights.

: 2 METHODS
Regulatory instruments, including laws, decrees, and regulations, determine how certain target groups should act.They prevent forest owners and managers from acting, which could restrain environmental goals in forests (Krott, 2005).Nature protection implementation as a national goal is secured through Act no.543/2002 Coll. on Nature and Landscape Protection, as amended.
We used document analysis in legal research to reason and interpret act paragraphs related to forest owners´ activity in forests.Social studies frequently use document analysis to analyse interview transcripts, strategic documents, and laws (Rapley, 2018).
We analysed the wording of the Act on Nature and Landscape Protection since the first date of the text.
Firstly, we reviewed all amendments to the law.Next, we identified those amendments in which some changes could impact forest administration and/or forest ownership.We also investigated the actors who formulated the new wording of the law.

: 3 RESULTS
The Act on Nature and Landscape Protection was enacted on 25 June 2002.Since then, it has been amended a total of 36 times.From these changes, we analysed only those that influence forest owners (Table 1).The Nature and Landscape Protection Act lists five levels of nature and landscape protection.As the law states, the forest owner must apply differentiated forest management practices (or not management at all) at individual levels.The changes in this law, which impact the forest owners most, concern mainly the rights and obligations in protected areas (changes in the management practices) and the compensation payments due to them.The analysed changes brought the development of compensatory payments from simple financial support to expanded compensation possibilities and widened the groups of recipients.
Over the years, the conditions related to the foundation of protected areas and compensation payments for ownership restrictions have been amended.Most of these amendments /seven of eight/ were formulated by the Ministry of Environment.
The first compensations were only financial and covered administrative costs for elaborating the new forest management plan.This was cancelled during the 13 th Amendment to the act.: 4 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION In Slovakia, nature protection is associated with restrictions on forest management practices/activites at individual levels of nature protection, which affects forest owners (Šálka, et al., 2016).This fact has stimulated the long-term emergence of conflicts, mitigated by the compensation payments for ownership rights restrictions.Therefore, its implementation did not work long (Kovalčík et al., 2012).
The forest owners could apply for compensation payments from mandatory legal restrictions related to specific forest management activities (or no intervention at all) in protected areas.The analysed changes to Act on Nature and Landscape Protection were mostly related to this issue.The implementation process of these payments was ineffective and only an amendment to the law valid from 01.01.2014 brought improvement (Báliková, 2020).Establishing protected areas is perceived as the most common source of conflict among stakeholders also in other European countries (Paletto et al., 2019).
The newest change focused on transferring the administration of forest land at national abbreviated legislative proceedings.State nature protection authorities are allowed to manage state forests in the territory of national parks.This mainly affected the TANAP State enterprise (Tatra National Park) and Agro-forest property Ulič State enterprise, whose task was to ensure comprehensive and integrated nature protection since its establishment.