Dr Žiga Ogorelec is Research Assistant at the NIB (National Institute of Biology) of Slovenia and specializes in Limnology and Ichthyology. He co-founded Gozdovništvo – Bushcraft & Survival School Slovenia, located in one of the wildest places of Central Europe, where sufficient wild foraging and a true remoteness are still possible.

Žiga developed a passion for survival challenges already at a young age. One of Žiga’s highlights is his 15-days solo survival, where he crossed Slovenia through its wildest part (270 km) eating only what he found in the wild.

As a PhD in biology, he has a deep understanding of natural processes like bioenergetics, the carrying capacity of the environment, food web dynamics, and a good basis in zoology, botany, and human physiology. His adventures have a wide variety from backcountry skiing, spearfishing, training javelin, climbing, caving and other outdoor activities. He also finished Iron Man, was the best candidate of his generation in the selection procedure for military officer school and cycled around the world (19,000 km, 5 continents, 34 countries). His philosophy is that living on the edge is necessary to develop survival thinking.

He is particularly good at primitive fishing, edible plants, wildlife, shelters, and friction fire, but likewise enjoys primitive pottery, making bows, atlatl, etc. Among more interesting projects was building a dugout canoe and 4-days survival rafting with it down the Kolpa River.

Besides running a survival school for 8 years, Žiga also organized many national meetings and two competitions in bushcraft skills (2018 and 2020) to promote sharing the ideas and knowledge of living in the wild. He is one of the persons who is bringing the local knowledge of survival in Central/East Europe to the global bushcraft audience.

Žiga can be contacted at ziga.ogorelec@gmail  or gozdovnistvo@gmail.com.

Further information can be found at his website of the survival school (Gozdovništvo – Bushcraft & Survival School Slovenia) he is running together with Miha, Jurij and Andrej:  https://gozdovnistvo.wixsite.com/prezivetje-slovenija