Podrobné vyhledávání v článcích

When mentioning the water retention, it mostly is related to water management in the open landscape. From a long-term point of view, a lot of issues should be improved and enhanced there, but water can be very well managed also in urban agglomerations. Historically, the priority in towns and cities had been to safely and as soon as possible drain off water from there. The efforts, of course, resulted in significant interventions into watercourse beds and consequently in adjacent floodplains, thus influencing the water regime. 

Invasive alien woody plants are a significant long-term problem of protected nature. Although we have been trying to control invasive alien woody plants, e.g. the most common Black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia), in many Specially Protected Areas in the Czech Republic, an effective management tool has been missing yet. In practice, there are various approaches differing in their philosophy and effectiveness and very often repeating mistakes, thus making sometimes the state of the art even worse instead effectively solving the problem. In this contribution, divided into several parts, the author would like to introduce the first experience from applying new measures in controlling the Black locust and other invasive trees and shrubs in the Podyjí/Thaya River Basin National Park (South Moravia).

Europe has considerably warmed up during the past decades, which is reflected in changes in the insect fauna. The most recognizable example is an expanding distribution range of the Praying mantis (Mantis religiosa), which has occupied, starting from the south, the whole of Moravia including the Jeseníky and Beskydy Mts during the 1990s, and has arrived in Bohemia via the Svitavy region. At present it occurs not only in Central Bohemian lowlands but also in the foothills of the Krkonoše/Giant Mts. or in the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands. Expanding butterflies include the Large copper (Lycaena dispar), which spreads at the same rate and in the same direction as the mantis, Great banded grayling (Brinthesia circe) and the Scarce swallowtail (Iphiclides podalirius).

“Presumption is our natural and original malady. The most calamitous and fragile of all creatures is man, and at the same time the proudest. He goes installing himself in his imagination that he makes himself God´s equal, that he ascribes himself divine attributes, that he winnows himself and separate himself from the mass of other creatures, determines the share allowed the animals, his colleagues of faculties and powers as seem good to him.”

 (Montaigne, An Apology for Raymond Sebond). 

Between 2014 and 2019, Central Europe experienced unprecedented drought and heat. However, what was an unpleasant episode for most people and for ecosystems made it possible to answer some questions related to the hydrological regime in the Czech Republic´s landscape and, together with climate models, to outline the expected future.

In the Czech Republic, a sharp decline in agricultural landscape biological diversity has recently become very urgent. The topic even now and then jumps from scientific journals and enters into mass media, thus confirming its weight and severity. The fact demonstrates the seriousness of this topic, which also starts to be noticed by part of the general public. Almost always negative cases are mentioned, but positive examples of a biodiversity rich agricultural land-scape appear rarely. The authors would therefore like to introduce the readers to the mosaics of vineyards, orchards, fields and steppes on the outskirts of the town of Velké Pavlovice (South Moravia). These may not only provide inspiration to those restoring varied agriculture landscapes, but mainly pose a great challenge to preserve them.

In July 2019, the selected parts of the Bohemian and Saxon Erzgebirge/Krušnohoří Mts., also known as the Ore Mountains, were inscribed onto the UNESCO World Cultural and Natural Heritage List (World Heritage List). The area has long been associated in the public consciousness with the impacts of lignite/brown coal mining on the landscape and on forests at the foot of this extensive mountain range; we thus encountered a number of questions and doubts at the time of preparing the documents for nomination. Therefore, the article additionally contributes to clarifying how the cultural and historical values of the Erzgebirge/Krušnohoří Mts. stand out, and it is an inspiration for deepening interdisciplinary cooperation. Simultaneously, it is a contribution to the reflection on how to deal with these border mountains from the point of view of national protection in the future. Despite the high proportion of interesting landscapes, unlike other border massifs the Erzgebirge/Krušnohoří Mts. are, paradoxically, a mountain range which has been declared neither a national park nor a protected landscape area.

With this article we start a series on transboundary protected areas certified under the Transboundary Parks programme of the EUROPARC Federation. The programme was a follow-up of initiatives taken earlier in the IUCN, inter alia, at the launch of the Parks for Life programme (1994, Priority project 22), and started soon after the fall of the Iron Curtain in Central and Eastern Europe, opening up previously unimaginable possibilities. Jan Čeřovský was a Czech representative strongly engaged in these activities. 

Allow us to present you with another issue of our Ochrana přírody/Nature Conservation Journal. This English language issue presents a summary of the articles published in 2020.

Dear friends,
Allow us to introduce to you the Ochrana přírody/Nature Conservation Journal, having been issued in the Czech Republic more than three quarters of a century. This is because the first issue appeared during a post-World War II euphoria already in 1946. The journal has experienced a lot of changes both in the formal and factual format since that time and it was issued mostly six or ten times a year. Surprisingly, many principal bases have been maintained to the present. The journal has always been aiming at professional and voluntary nature conservationists and at the general public interested in natural and landscape heritage conservation and management.