During the last week of August, we hosted an international youth camp at Molpír near Smolenice village in Small Carpathians. It was organized by the association Strom života (Tree of Life) and almost 30 young people from Slovakia, Finland, the Netherlands and Greece came to it. With our joint efforts, we managed to clean more than a kilometer long corridor, in which we also started to build an electric fence for goats. Additionally, we picked up a few bags of trash, raged the mown grass under the fence, and began expanding and connecting the overgrown branches above the cherry orchard. They host a population of the rare clouded apollo butterfly, whose caterpillars develop in the surrounding light forests. Thanks to the voluntary help of young people from different corners of Europe, we have come significantly closer to the goal of returning the hooves of farm animals to this naturalistic, but also historically very valuable site. Without them, the slopes of Molpír, inhabited already in the early Iron Age, would be overgrown with invasive and invasive trees.
We are cooperating with the municipality of Smolenice, which is the owner of the land, and the local farmer Mr. Matiašovič, who we would like to thank for providing the facilities for the camp participants, to restore traditional grazing on this site as part of the LIFE Endemic PANALP project. And last but not least, of course, we would like to thank all the participants of the camp and its organizers! Photos: Martin Šopinec, Jakub Cíbik
