The purpose of the bachelor thesis was to analyse data on forest fires collected by the Slovenia Forest Service between years 1995 and 2018 in order to get familiar with the effects of fire and prescribed burning on forest ecosystems. We looked into articles of both Slovenian and foreign authors as well as analysed the frequency of occurrence of ortolan bunting on areas where large scales forest fires had been recorded. We tried to find out the impact of fires on the abundance and biodiversity of birds on the example of the endangered species ortolan bunting, which occupies open habitats in Kras, in which overgrowth of agricultural land and its abandonment is a problem. Two-thirds of all forest fires happened in Kras. Almost half of all seen cases of ortolan bunting in Slovenia have been recorded on large, burned areas, where in the past 10 ha of land or more had burned. In conclusion, we struggled with a small sample, because the population of ortolan bunting is small and in decline. Doubts also arose about the usage of prescribed burning in habitats, where European black pine is predominant, which has no adaptations to wildfires.
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