100 stories from the hiking route

1936 – Rava oak forest is placed under protection

Information

Topic

The story of forestry

Coordinates

Long-Lat WGS 84

Latitude: 59.123625

Longitude: 25.84859722

L-EST 97

x: 6555345
y: 605850.3

Location

Ähijärve-Aegviidu Hiking route

In 1935, Estonia saw the introduction of the country’s first Nature Conservation Act that set out of the organisation of nature conservation in protected areas and elsewhere in the country. In 1936, Gustav Vilbaste, the first national nature protection inspector, began working, compiling the nature conservation registry where he gathered information about all protected subjects. The first entry into the nature conservation registry in 1936 was about the Rava oak forest in Järva County with the intention to protect and preserve the diverse oak and mixed forest.
In 1935, Ambla rural municipality government planned to sell some of the trees on the school’s lot. Soon after, a quality inspector from a parquet factory arrived to fell the trees. However, Boris Eichhorn, forester at the time, and Viktor Raudna, head of the school, intervened and the logging was stopped, but only after the constable was summoned. Thanks to the order of the constable, the trees were saved. For many years later, the saw mark was shown as a sign of victory to those who showed interest.
The size of the Rava oak forest is 22 hectares; it has 92 protected old-growth oaks, 16 large larches and a pine that is several hundred years old. It is assumed that the oak forest is a remnant of an old-growth grove.