The Livanjsko Polje in Bosnia-Herzegovina is a cultural landscape rich in biodiversity. We support farmers in finding approaches for a sustainable way of life. In this way, we are also helping to prevent young people from migrating. Our author Katharina Grund visited a some of them.
Human-made biodiversity - Travelling in Livanjsko Polje
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Sometimes it is necessary to take a step back and look at things from above. EuroNatur project manager Sandra Wigger has been campaigning successfully for many years for the protection of the cultural landscape of Livanjsko Polje.
I am crushing plant leaves between my fingers. Inevitably, I turn around to look for the lady who left the scent of her perfume hanging in the air. But there’s nobody there. Only carpets of winter savory. Soon it will dye the landscape purple and white and beekeepers from Croatia will cross the border to let their bees fan out here. Whoever rambles through Livanjsko Polje in summer does so in pollen-yellow trousers. The song of the larks is deafening. With all my senses I drink in diversity: colours, patterns, structures, images of colourful butterflies and – bird calls. I realise painfully how quiet and empty Central Europe has become in comparison. It could be comforting to see how the surrounding mountains protect Livanjsko Polje. But unfortunately I know of how little use this is.
The karst poljes in Bosnia-Herzegovina are natural and man-made landscapes of national and international significance. These plains, which are often surrounded by craggy mountains, are formed where chalky rocks at the edge of a depression are dissolved. For thousands of years they have been used for farming. Because there are no outlets above ground, they are temporarily flooded extensively or fall mostly dry. This dynamics shapes a mosaic of habitats of exceptional biodiversity. With its expanse of about 460 square kilometres, Livanjsko Polje is considered the largest temporarily water-filled karst field in the world. Since the start of the cooperation between EuroNatur and our Bosnian conservation partners Naše ptice and Naše baština, the number of documented bird species has steadily risen. Today, more than three quarters of the bird species living in Bosnia-Herzegovina and more than 850 different species of vascular plants are thriving there. Giving up traditional land use (for example extensive grazing) is also a problem because open expanses are subsequently overgrown and their biodiversity disappears. An official protection status would be urgently needed, but has not as yet been supported by the local government.
According to the report of the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration, about 45 percent of Bosnia-Herzegovina’s population lived abroad in 2022. Political and economical grievances are the main reasons for this massive emigration. Livanjsko Polje is affected by it, too. Especially its northern part looks deserted. Depopulation is not as pronounced in its southern part, where Ivana Milić, Bože Manić and Ivo Maleta live, but still clearly noticeable. Instead of waiting for a change of heart from above, EuroNatur and its local parter organisations have initiated a local social initiative for an ecological regional development, which is becoming more and more popular. Its aim is to support encouraging pilot schemes, but also to build a network of people who exchange their experiences and mutually strengthen one another.
“We stay here!”
“Bosnia-Herzegovina’s government would prefer to see the region depopulated in order to be able to exploit all resources unhindered. When humans fighting back are no longer there, they will sell the water, the forests, the peat, the coal and everything else,” EuroNatur project manager Sandra Wigger is certain. “We want to avert this development by working out approaches for a sustainable way of life together with farmers in Livanjsko Polje and playing a part in helping to prevent young people from leaving. Even though we can’t contribute large sums, it means a lot to the people there that an organisation from Germany is interested in them. Our direct and unbureaucratic support helps them not to give up,” says Sandra Wigger.
The ground is vibrating. Shadows are approaching from a distance, turning into animals as they are coming nearer. Floppy ears are bouncing up and down, heavy bodies are galloping towards us. Ivana Milić’s Black Slavonian Pigs are as free as wild horses. Suddenly a flash of lightning splits the stormy sky. Ivana’s hair is blazing against the backdrop as if the pig farmer was on fire. “I’m not scared!,” she shouts to me while she is walking along the pasture, followed by her herd, checking the electric fence financed by EuroNatur. She was able to enclose twenty-one hectares with it, that is a lot. For Ivana Milić, this land means the life she has always wanted to live.
With an easy, natural movement she drives a hammer into the wooden wall of the newly built pigsty, very much as if she wanted to underline that she belongs here and nowhere else. Like many of her fellow countrypeople, Ivana Milić repeatedly spent time in Frankfurt to work in the catering trade. But in the big city, far away from home, she could not breathe. “I continuously opened windows wide to get some air,” she remembers. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, the Bosnian Croat made it home on the last plane to Banja Luka. “I simply had to go home.” For the past 13 years, Ivana Milić has been working on establishing a pig farm in Livanjsko Polje, repeatedly interrupted by stays in Germany. At first it was only a hobby. She wanted to contribute to providing high-quality food in the region. For three years, her enterprise has now been officially registered under the name of “Terra Mater” – mother earth.
Ivana Milić's Black Slavonian pigs are robust and independent.
“This is a business model for the future and allows me independence. That’s what I’m wishing for not only for myself, but for all other people here. So many farmers are forced to go abroad and earn money there. Only a few return and manage to establish something with their earnings. If they succeed at all, it takes a long time. Our minister of agriculture invests into the wrong projects! I promised him wellingtons for Christmas so that he would visit me at long last and see for himself what a great job I’m doing here. But he has never shown up. In contrast, EuroNatur’s Sandra Wigger has been here thrice, although she had to travel all the way from Germany. She takes me seriously and has encouraged me during hard times to carry on. Without this support I would have been in a fix. The minister does not care what I’m doing here. Even though it could be a pilot scheme for the whole region. Whoever has little money should have Slavonian Pigs. My animals are self-reliant and robust. The overbred pigs kept in industrial factories need many vaccinations. My animals, in contrast, are always outdoors. They have never seen a veterinarian.”
The wind blows constantly in Livanjsko Polje. According to statistics, only four days a year are calm. The wind puts my hair into knots and dries Ivanas pork meat. “Without preservatives, all completely natural. My pigs taste of a happy life. It’s the same as with eggs. They all look the same on the outside, but when you crack them, you can tell by the colour of the yolk whether the animals had a good life.” Ivana sells her pork all over Bosnia-Herzegovina. Its quality is so high that expensive restaurants are among her customers. Ivana’s piglets fetch 100 euros each. Sitting in her house at the kitchen table, she holds out her mobile to me. Its speaker emits contented grunts and snorts. Black pigs are wallowing in water. Their joy is catching and I feel it immediately. Ivana Milić has digged the mud hole by her own hands.
Ivana is visibly at ease in her role of emancipated woman standing on her own two feet. Her energy is especially challenging the men in the region. “When I was driving in the poles for my new electric fence for hours on end, they wanted to know why it looked so easy. I laughed and told them that I have so much strength because I am so motivated. When I began with pig farming, everyone in the village thought me crazy. They were sure I wouldn’t make it, but that only spurred me on,” she remembers and smiles. Today, around 30 farmers are collaborating with her. “We can earn our living five minutes away from our houses. With the meat of our pigs we offer something special. We can pay our taxes with it and still earn good wages.” Could she imagine living somewhere else again? “No, I will never leave what I have here!”
With my new mower, I can mow even larger areas than we ourselves need for our winter feed.
Bože Manić has been having a girlfriend for some months now – a long-distance relationship. Ana lives on the other side of the hill and not, like Bože, in Potkraj at the edge of Livanjsko Polje. He met her in a café. “If you use your time wisely, you have enough of it,” says the twenty-two-year-old. Even though Bože Manić is proud of being a shepherd, he still thought about how Ana would react to it. Most girls don’t want someone who has to be with the flock the whole year round, without weekends or holidays off. Then Ana told him that she, too, has animals and the ice was broken. Today, they send each other messages, when Bože tends his 100 sheep and his girlfriend on the other side of the hill brings her 30 cows back into the barn. Sometimes with numb fingers, when the air is so icy that it freezes on the fleece of Bože’s sheep, sometimes when it’s 35°C in the shade. This is something Bože Manić loves especially about his profession: the freedom to do things in his own rhythm, to be his own master – in contrast to the time when he could not yet make a living from sheep farming and had to accept a side job as bulldozer driver.
Vlado Manić is proud of his son. The grandparents and parents could only ever use sheep farming as an additional source of income. Now, things have changed. With tanned fingers, Vlado points to the hundred sheep who have taken refuge from the midday heat in the shade of a tree. “That’s all Bože’s doing. Look at how clean and healthy his animals are! It shows you that he is taking his work seriously. If he wouldn’t, the sheep would have mud-caked legs up to their knees.” Four lambs fetch Bože Manić the equivalent of 800 euros, more than a monthly salary of his father’s, who works as a butcher in a nearby business. “The prices are so high because many have given up sheep farming and lamb is scarce on the market,” Vlado explains. The alert, kind eyes of both reveal their kinship – not only outwardly. Vlado, too, loves being with the sheep. “I look at them grazing and take a deep breath. I love the scent of nature, of the forest, of the flowers. That’s the best therapy after the stress of the day.”
But being a sheep farmer is not all that romantic, after all. “Not everyone can be a shepherd, you really have to want that,” Vlado knows. Only last night a new lamb was born. The young man knows his animals. He cannot but laugh at the question of how he is able to tell his sheep apart. “We are together all day, so we know each other.” With a whistle he calls the animals across the pasture to him. “90 percent of the land we use is provided by others, because we do not have enough of our own,” he explains. I ask him whether EuroNatur’s support has made his life easier. “Yes, now I have a mower and don’t need to pay people to press hay bales for me. I can even mow larger areas than we need ourselves for the winter feed. That is a great help, because it is important to keep the land from being overgrown by bushes and trees. When I don’t mow the meadows, the people set them on fire. Last year, we produced 3,000 hay bales near Lake Buško, much more than we would have needed ourselves.” Could he imagine leaving this place? “No! I want to stay here and live as a sheep farmer, nothing else,” he answers firmly.
Somebody came and offered us help. That had never happened before. I thought to myself: it costs nothing to give it a try!
Ivo Maleta, sheep farmer
Everything is easier with a smile: Ivo Maleta is looking forward to his new sheep barn (picture below).
Ivo Maleta welcomes me with a strong squeeze of hand and a disarming smile. It was probably similar when Biljana and Goran Topić from EuroNatur partner organisation Naše ptice came to his farm for the first time a few years ago to get to know him. Ivo hunts, that made especially Biljana suspicious at first. Today, she speaks of Ivo as a man whom she trusts. Ivo Maleta and his wife Dragana were open to working together right from the start.
A little later, Ivo found himself an attentive listener to lectures on the biodiversity of Livanjsko Polje, organised by Naše ptice. He learned how much he could contribute as a sheep farmer to preserving this diversity. In a first step, Ivo and Dragana received a funding of 3,000 euros, in a second step it was more. Mutual trust sprouted like a seed. Soon, the purely financial support became less important. “When somebody helps you, everything becomes easier. When you can talk with someone, the burden becomes lighter,” Ivo says and remembers how, a short time ago and once again, he had overstepped all bodily limits while working and found himself in hospital. “Luckily, everything was okay, I had just exerted myself too much.” And he adds emphatically: “I had several opportunities to do something else, that’s not the point. There would be a million easier jobs, but I don’t want them. Here you can find peace and quiet, even if you have to work hard physically.”
We walk to a pen in the basement of the house of Ivo’s father-in-law. Many of the houses in the village are vacant. The 43-year-old is pretty sure that there will never be anyone to take over his farm. “After all, everyone has left.” He shrugs his shoulders and makes it clear that there is no point in brooding about it. Ivo whistles and calls with kissing sounds: “hooet, hooet, hooet.” His sheep bleat in answer, the hay is rustling, in between the drawing sounds of chickens are heard. A swallow’s nest clings to the ceiling. Ivo has to duck in order to avoid bumping into it. He does not wear a watch on his wrist, his time is set by the needs of his animals. “Up here, we have the ewes with lambs, in another pen we have the pregnant animals, the rams are at a third place and over there we have the ewe lambs. Thrice a day we have to do the whole round, so you fall off your feet in the evening,” Ivo laughs. “Once our big sheep barn is finished, where we can set up everything in one place, it will be an enormous relief.” EuroNatur supports Ivo and Dragana in this.
In the past, the two also had cows besides the sheep, until they sold everything except for the tractors and sought their fortune in a village near Frankfurt. “The work there was not as hard and well paid. After a while I said to my boss: Let’s make a deal! I will work three months for you and then let me go home for three weeks. He did not approve, so I quit. I missed my house, nature, everything here. It is nice to go to Germany as a tourist or to work there for two or three months. But this here is something completely different”, says Ivo Maleta and puts his large hand on his heart.
Text: Katharina Grund, interpreter: Vinko Šarac For the author, her trip to Livanjsko Polje was a feast for the senses. In the morning, she woke up to the call of the hoopoe and enjoyed the diversity of nature that could be observed there. The people of Livanjsko Polje have interesting stories to tell. Interpreter Vinko Šarac helped Katharina Grund to gain insights into their lives.
