New 40 solitary fruit trees

On Earth Day, on April 22nd, we began to plant first 13 out of 40 planned solitary fruit trees within the Gorička Krajina project. Trees will be planted at selected locations in Goričko Nature Park. At the end 20 pear and 20 service trees were planted. The last pear tree was planted in Dobrovniške gorice and the last service tree in Peskovci.



The main aim of this nature conservation and landscape measure is to improve the habitat conditions for the Scops owl, one of the target species of the project. Eurasian scops owl uses solitary trees in the landscape mainly as a song perch to mark its territory and to attract females. This exposed trees are also a frequent nesting place or are used as a hunting poles. Solitary trees have many other roles within the mosaic landscape. They produce oxygen and are the sinkholes of greenhouse gases, they provide shade and have an effect on microclimate condition. They are a distinctive feature of the cultural landscape and even give the recognisability to the area.



The locations were carefully selected and are scattered throughout the Goričko Natura 2000 area. The main criteria for location selection was that it is an exposed place in an open landscape, often on a slope and lacks of solitary trees.
New trees are now growing on following locations: Andrejci, Bodonci, Budinci, Čepinci, Dobrovnik, Dolenci, Dolnji Slaveči, Gerlinci, Gornji Petrovci, Gornji Slaveči, Grad, Hodoš, Ivanjševci, Ivanovci, Kobilje, Krašči, Križevci, Kruplivnik, Kuštanovci, Kuzma, Lončarovci, Markovci, Martinje, Moščanci, Pečarovci, Peskovci, Prosečka vas, Prosenjakovci, Ratkovci, Selo, Serdica, Stanjevci, Šalamenci, Šalovci, Trdkova, Večeslavci, Vidonci, Ženavlje.