Dear readers,

The foreword of the editor is joint for “Natura Montenegrin” numbers 3/2004 and 4/2005.

In period from 14 to 18 October 2004 the First Symposium of Ecologists of Montenegro was organized. That has been the first forum of the kind in Montenegro after a number of years burdened with dismounting of one system, war in the surrounding and a regression or stagnation of almost all values, which had been developed by hat time.

The Natural History Museum of Montenegro has been one of the organizers of the Symposium. It has faced the difficulties which are always present in the stage of revival, especially the problems in scientific publishing. The Editorial Board of the publication “Natura Montenegrina” has decided to make “the pages”   available to the participants of the Symposium and promised all the papers presented at this forum to be published in this publication.

This decision resulted in creating to Editorial Board of “Natura Montegrina” a series of problems which put them before the serious choice.

Firstly, the number of papers, reports and other contributions reaching the Symposium has exceeded the expectations.

Secondly, the quality of the papers has not been uniform. This has been especially notable, as the Symposium has been the first international scientific gathering in this field after a longer period of time.

Wishing to keep the promise given, the Editorial Board has proceeded as follows:

The problem of the large number of contributions obtained has been solved so that the papers would be simultaneously published in two issues of  “Natura Montenegrina”, respectively in numbers 3/2004 and 4/2005.

The criterions for publishing the papers had to be less strict. Majority of failures has referred to erroneous quoting of the literature used, insufficient defining of methods used, partly the data have been obsolete, and in some cases the translation of the papers into the English Language has not been precise.

The papers that met the requirements have been divided, as usually, according to the fields of the scientific research. The papers which failed to meet the requirements for publishing the scientific periodicals have been listed in a common group entitled “Papers from the Symposium”. The contributions presented on the Symposium by he NGOs are to be published in the part normally reserved for scientific popular papers.

The Editorial Board of “Natura Montenegrina” will also in future make available the room for the contributions from the scientific meetings, certainly, developing further the criterions, in order to have the quality of published papers reach the desired level.

We do hope that the readers of “Natura Montegrina” and our partners in exchange accept this approach and that we will continue our partnership.

                                                                             Editor in Chief

                                                                                Ondrej Vizi