The final conference of the International LIFE + project EMoNFUr (www.emonfur.eu) entitled "Urban forests - the lungs of cities" was held in Milan on the 17th of June ​​2014.
In the course of a one-day event the results of the work of the Italian and Slovenian colleagues in the past three years were presented, delegates and speakers exchanged views on urban and peri-urban forests and showed some good management practices with other green infrastructure outside of Italy and Slovenia and Europe.
Among the delegates and speakers - in addition to researchers and professors, were also urban forest managers, technical personnel performing work in urban forests and representatives of city departments of Turin, Milan and Ljubljana.
Selected first results of Slovenian activities in the project EMoNFUr were presented at the closing conference by the Head of the Slovenian part of the project team and researcher of forest hydrology and microclimate conditions in the forest dr. Ursa Vilhar, coordinator of urban and peri-urban forest inventory in Ljubljana Mitja Skudnik, researcher of forest flora and vegetation dr. Lado Kutnar, researcher of forest entomofauna and birds dr. Maarten de Groot and field assistant in charge of research infrastructure in the field Matej Rupel. The results of all activities will be presented in the final report of the project and the presentation of the results, which will be held in the autumn of 2014 at the Slovenian Forestry Institute. Date of the event will be posted on the website of the Institute.
Invited presentation on the management of urban and peri-urban forests in the City of Ljubljana was conducted by the colleague of the Department of Environmental Protection at the City of Ljubljana, Ms. Zala Strojin Božič, MSc.
More than 20 colleagues of Slovenian Forestry Institute worked on EMoNFUr project (terminates in September 2014), together with colleagues from the company TISA d.o.o., Slovenia Forest Service, Department of Forestry and Renewable Forest Resources at Biotechnical Faculty of the University of Ljubljana, Department of Environmental Protection of the City of Ljubljana, Institute of Forest pedagogy and others.
The project was co-financed by the European Commission in addition to the Ministry of Agriculture and the Environment and the City of Ljubljana.

(photo: Matej Rupel)