Rila Monastery Nature Park Management Plan - part - usaid

February 2004
Dairy farming was another industrial activity practiced within the present-day
boundaries of RMNP until the 1970s; it was then that the last dairy farm remained in
operation at Brichebor locality, before being closed down for good.
Mining and management of mineral resources
It is known, that during the 50s and 60s of the 20 th century, studies for uranium
recovery at the foot of Vodnia Rid are conducted. Tunnels drilled for the purposes of
uranium prospecting survive to the present day alongside the road connecting
Kirilova Polyana with Tiha Rila.
In the past, the local population used to quarry local stone for facings and roofing
slabs. Stone slabs were mined on the southern slopes around Mramoretz Peak and in
the direction of the 12th Post locality.
4.1.4 Forestry
The first forest inventory for the lands belonging to the Monastery was commissioned
in 1890 by Yordan Mitrev, the then forestry inspector for Kyustendil. Until then, the
Monastery had been surrounded by all-natural, centuries-old forests, with timber
extraction being insignificant in volume. There were only two small, water-powered
sawmills, one on the Dyavolski Vodi River, and the other, on the Lomnitza.
Towards the end of the 20 th century, the land holdings of Rila Monastery amounted to
21,935.6 hectares, of which 7,456 ha were forests. Of those, 4,530 ha, or 61 percent,
were coniferous, and the remaining 2,926 ha, or 39 percent, were deciduous forests.
The average age of trees in those days was estimated at 103 years (as compared with
99 years at present); 74 percent of all forests were aged 80 years or over (as compared
with 72 percent today). The average forest density was then 0.7, and is now 0.65.
Timber resources then were estimated at 397 m³ per hectare on average, and for
coniferous forests alone, at 492 m³ per hectare. No such figures have been registered
for a single piece of land within the entire Bulgarian territory at present. The average
annual growth in those days (1890) was an estimated 3.65 m³ per hectare.
In the beginning of 1892, a powerful snowstorm knocked down thousands of
coniferous trees throughout the forest, especially in its western and southwestern
portion of the Park. To extract and utilize the fallen timber, 17 new water-powered
sawmills were built around the Monastery in 1894-95 alone; this marked the
beginning of a period of particularly intensive over-use of the Rila Monastery forests
that was to continue up until the very end of the 10 th century. Between 1902 and
1933, the notorious Balabanov concession had fully established itself within the
territory. All coniferous trees over 30 cm in diameter in nearly all parts of the forest
were put to the ax and saw. There was even a plan to make the Rilska River navigable
by a system of weirs and locks in order to facilitate the extraction of so much timber
to the large new sawmill built at the village of Barakovo. Timber was moved from the
logging grounds to the rivers by rolling the logs down the slopes or using runners to
slide them down dry or water-filled runways in the natural folds of the mountain. A
narrow-gauge railroad was completed and put on stream in 1921 for the main purpose
of timber extraction; thus rail superseded the extremely dangerous and labor-intensive
Rila Monastery Nature Park
Management Plan -Draft
2004 - 2013
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