Page 275 - Changing Living Spaces

The Neverlake: Water and Land Management in a Dry and Soilless Place

rents’ and to prevent ‘rocks from being deposited on fields’, while allow-
ing ‘soil to be deposited on the flooded bottom of the valley’. The bottom
of the doline was thus flooded again and the water was merely contained,
no longer directed and stored. On the other hand, quite extensive culti-
vated terraces had been created on one slope, testifying to another great
and final effort to increase the arable land, which can be dated to the sec-
ond half of the nineteenth century. Half a century later, after the Second
World War, the water infrastructure was no longer operational or serving
its purpose; now it is only a memory. Part of the area was used as grass-
land, the rest of the karst pond was planted with willows, which gradu-
ally dried it up completely. Agricultural activities were becoming less a
secondary activity and more a marginal, almost leisure activity. Today,
hardly any traces of cultivation can be seen; most of the area is devoted
to mowing or hunting game. It could be said that this marks the end of a
four-hundred-year cycle, with land use returning to its original form be-
fore the waters were regulated. The only difference is that the lake has
disappeared – both the big lake and the small lake. In short, over the cen-
turies (mostly during the last century and a half, and especially the last
five decades) we have witnessed a gradual and then accelerated deteriora-
tion of the water regulation infrastructure, its purpose, and its efficien-
cy. This has led to a parallel process of decay of a highly interesting and,
according to what is known so far in the literature, original and rare cul-
tural landscape in the Karst, which is (unfortunately) almost extinct in
the present.
Although the above reconstruction is partly based on assumptions, it is
nevertheless also based on quite solid documentary evidence that allows
us to defend this description of human adaptation and use of the envi-
ronment in the last four centuries. There are, however, some unanswered
questions that we can only partially answer at the moment and that can
be summarised in two groups of problems. The first group concerns the
possible impact of climate change and undisputed environmental chang-
es on the historically documented curve of the Štanjel ‘Neverlake’. The
second group relates to the identification of the initiator or initiators of
the ingenious and efficient water regulation system in the area of the lake.

Question About the Initiators of the Regulation of ‘Neverlake’:
The People of Štanjel or the Landlord?
In this section we will look at the social and economic factors that influ-
enced the environmental adaptation initiative and its outcome in terms

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