Josip Movčan · 1924–2016
Josip Movčan · 1924–2016
Our heritage
Tomorrow you will walk on wooden footbridges that hover just above turquoise water, so close to the waterfalls you can feel the spray. Almost nobody asks who put them there. The answer: a quiet forester named Josip Movčan — the grandfather of your host at Villa Mukinja.
The planner · 1958
Born in Čakovec in 1924, Josip Movčan studied forestry in Sopron and Zagreb, specialising in landscape planning. In the autumn of 1958 he was sent to a young national park in the Croatian mountains: Plitvice Lakes.
He would stay for 33 years. As the park's head of protection and planning, he faced a question nobody had answered yet: how do you let the world see a fragile wonder — without destroying it? His answer, which he called nature-proximate tourism, still defines Plitvice today.
The builder
Almost everything a visitor touches at Plitvice passed through his hands: the trails, the reception areas, the panoramic trains, the silent electric boats — and the wooden boardwalks that became the park's symbol.
From the park archive
The first mostići were humble things — rough logs laid by hand, railings of peeled branches, paths that followed the water instead of fighting it.
These photographs from the national park's archive show the boardwalks taking shape under Movčan's care. The materials changed over the decades, but the idea never did: touch the lakes as lightly as possible. Photographs courtesy of the Plitvice Lakes National Park archive.
The philosophy
He liked to say that the branch where we have built our nest must remain healthy — yet can only bear limited weight.
Long before "sustainable tourism" was a phrase, Movčan practised it: campsites moved out of the park, development limited, nature given the final word. He believed protection begins in the minds of the people who live and work around the lakes — a conviction this village still carries.
The recognition
His work made Plitvice a model for national parks worldwide. He organised two European conferences of national parks at the lakes, served on the board of the EUROPARC Federation, and later helped shape Hohe Tauern National Park in Austria.
In his own words
“Under pressure from management, some sections of the boardwalks were built 1.5 metres wide — more recently even wider — which the Plitvice landscape visually cannot bear. Wide boardwalks invite two-way traffic, and that is in essence the beginning of a new stampede. This mistake should be corrected and 1.4 metres restored as the standard width, which practice has confirmed as the happiest solution.”
“In step with how the idea, definition and understanding of national parks evolved around the world, this park spent all that time building its own status, its ideology, its scientific foundation, its concept of spatial planning and the realisation of that concept — while at the same time solving the question of its own material existence.”
“Special mention must be made of the efforts this national park makes in the field of scientific research. Through the Plitvice Research Project, those efforts are directed at uncovering the laws and monitoring the condition of the natural complex — and so form the basis of its comprehensive protection.”
Translated from the original Croatian.
From the family album
A few more moments from a long life beside the lakes — at work, among colleagues, and at the celebration of the park's 40th anniversary.
The story continues
Josip Movčan was the grandfather of your host at Villa Mukinja. The love for these lakes runs in the family — walk his paths tomorrow, and let us tell you the rest of the story over coffee.
