Sport climbing in Slovenia has enormously increased in popularity over past decades leading to the high turnouts at the climbing cliffs. Therefore a climbing impact evaluation on cliff ecosystems is urgent. The impact on rare and threatened bird species has already been observed in Slovenia, but there is no data about the climbing effect on cliff vegetation. We examined the climbing impact on cliff vegetation in Gorenjska region, catalogued vascular plant and bryophyte species and described their ecological charasteristics. We acknowledged, that the climbing impact on species number and abundance of vascular plants and bryophytes in the selected climbing areas is not statistically significant. Also species composition and ecological charasteristics did not differ significantly between climbed and unclimbed sites and climbing intensity did not influence species number and abundance. The only difference was the percentage of woody plants, which was higher in unclimbed sites, whereas percentages of herbaceous perennials, annual and biennial plants were proportionaly higher in climbed sites. Woody plants grow slower thus other plants fill the gaps in microtopographic features after they were cleaned by climbers. Our study proved little climbing effect on cliffs, but it can not be generalized. In Slovenia, further research is welcome and climbers' care for nature conservation is still a must. An increasing number of climbers is an additional reason to make them aware of their
impact. We created a PowerPoint presentation, which could be good tool to inform climbers in climbing and alpine courses and clubs.
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