AUTHOR, PHOTOGRAPHERHometown: Postojna, Slovenia
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Slavko Polak is a biologist and Senior Curator at Notranjska Museum in Postojna. He works on popularisation of fauna and flora in the region with a broad research interest mostly in vertebrates, beetles and butterflies of the region and subterranean beetles on wider global scale.
He prepared a model for monitoring cave beetle Leptodirus hochenwartii in Slovenia for Natura 2000 and is preparing an atlas on subterranean beetles of Slovenia. As an expert of subterranean fauna, he regularly participates in International Symposiums of Subterranean Biology worldwide. As a curator, he led the opening of the speleo-vivarium in 2004 in the Postojna cave and arranged "Karst Museum", a permanent exhibition of the Notranjska museum.
Polak is member of most Slovene zoological societies (studying and protecting birds, bats, butterflies, dragonflies, entomology, herpetology, natural heritage conservation…) and some International societies, such as the International Society for Subterranean Biology.