May, 2023 – At the beginning of May the YMS team once again used an entire workday to take care of Slovak forests. During the company team building we planted approximately 2300 small beech trees on a slope in Zvolenská Slatina where a bark-beetle calamity destroyed the previous trees.
The project Green Slovakia, formerly known as Million Trees, is alive thanks to companies and volunteers willing to donate their time to the forests. “We chose nature and restoration of forests from a number of volunteering themes because our systems also help them. For rangers and farmers our software is an everyday work tool, applications contribute to improving the care of trees and fields. And the YMS team can wield hoes just as well as computer mice, so we gladly join in the restoration of our forests,” says Róbert Francek, executive director of YMS, about our volunteer focus.
This time we planted near a university forestry enterprise of the Technical University in Zvolen, in the Budča forest administration, in the district of Čertove Kúty. During the planting, we were led by the forest warden Jaroslav Skučka. “We are standing on what was originally a field that had no agricultural value, so under communist leadership, 45 years ago, it was sowed with a monoculture of spruce. However, bark beetle destroyed the forest and we are reforesting with a more resistant mix of coniferous and deciduous trees,” explains Jaroslav Skučka.
Twenty team members planted approximately 2300 beech saplings, thus fulfilling the plan to reforest the majority of the slope. “Two-year-old beech saplings come from the forest nursery of the school enterprise. They are screened for viability and treated to withstand transfer to planting. We plant them at a sufficient depth so that deer can’t pull them out of the ground,” mountaineer Skučka continues in his explanation.
The man responsible for the good mood while planting on the slope in the sun is the planting coordinator from the civic association Moje Slovensko, Mr. Matúš Pivovar. He explained how reforestation with volunteers works, played his accordion, and revealed that he professionally monitors bark beetle calamities with the help of satellite imaging, similar to YMS with its space translator, the Innovative Act of the Year: ySpace.
As a team, we will definitely repeat planting trees to help our forests. For companies that aren’t sure where to donate their volunteering time, we suggest planting as an activity that will definitely entertain and distract the team, as well as help.