October 19, 2022 - The administration of Croatian Forests points out that in order to enter the forests and pick the autumn fruits they manage, you need a permit, which is free and relatively easy to obtain.
The season of forest fruits has started, and the pickers can do well this year, as confirmed by the story from a few days ago when a girl from Maruševac in the Varaždin area found a boletus weighing two kilograms. It is a nice mushroom to take a selfie with and earn your place in the media. And the fact that the chestnut festival in Sveti Ivan Zelina last weekend attracted as many as 10,000 visitors shows how much people enjoy autumn fruits.
As RTL reports, however, weekend pickers who want to spend a lovely day in nature and collect some chestnuts, mushrooms, or wild rosehips should be careful because they need a permit to pick. There are rules on how much can be taken out of the forest because, for example, a maximum of three kilograms of mushrooms can be picked daily.
"In addition to mushrooms, other forest fruits are chestnuts, aromatic, edible and medicinal plants, wild berries, etc. All collectors of forest products for personal needs can independently create a permit through our web application, which is published on the Croatian Forests portal, and you can find it HERE. The permit is issued for the current year and is valid until December 31 of the same year. It is issued by selecting the branch of the forest administration in whose area plants and mushrooms will be collected and then selecting legally available plants for collection. Legally available plants are those that are not considered strictly protected species, the list of which is defined by the Ordinance on Strictly Protected Species. The permit issuance is free of charge," Croatian Forests explained to RTL.
Easy enough? No worries, Croatian bureaucracy is always there to make it more interesting - a new license must be made for each branch, while the list of products on the permit can be expanded. "After the request is submitted, the system generates a permit in the form of a PDF, which is automatically delivered to the user's registered e-mail," Croatian Forests explain the procedure. The permit received by e-mail must be printed and carried with you.
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