Nature and Landscape Management

The Nature Conservation Agency of the Czech Republic (NCA CR) has been for ten years elaborating together with academic institutions standards in nature conservation and landscape protection. Almost thirty such standards have been published yet and approx. the same number has been under preparation. Up-to-date experience shows that the concept of standardization in various activities has proved itself successful and has fulfilled its purpose: standards are used by designers, customers, planners, project implementers, contractors, evaluators of application for a subsidy/subvention/grant and they are also applied in the State/Public Administration performance. Moreover, they are sometimes misapplied. Thus, the standards at present have been serving as a basis for establishing unified code lists of activities in nature conservation and landscape protection linked to costs of common measures and consequently for planning and documenting the interventions having been made in nature and the landscape.

In the Czech Republic, Specially Protected Area1 management has been one of the most important tasks of the State Nature Conservancy since the 1990s. Due to improving the knowledge of species and natural habitat distribution and their development as well as increasing uncertainty caused by incomplete knowledge of impacts resulted from extensive anthropogenic land-use changes and current and predicted climate change, a traditional long-term planned blueprint management has been untenable. Therefore, the Nature Conservation Agency of the Czech Republic (NCA CR) decided to apply in practice adaptive management (AM) and to introduce necessary information and economic tools for its implementation.

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). 

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.

I believe in an authentic internationally recognized national park, but the path to it is thorny, slow and cautious… 
The hitherto maturing National Park can easily be compared to the life of a human being. Its birth was full of enthusiasm and great plans developed by fathers, mothers, uncles and aunts, grandmothers and grandfathers – and each person had a different plan. But everybody agreed that it is necessary to put the best into the child's life.

This year, already a second update of the Conception for Unblocking the Czech River Network, an important water management planning document, will be completed. At present, the Czech Nature Conservation Agency is working on a proposal delineating watercourses which are primarily determined to be made passable for migration, at the same time respecting territorial and species protection. 
For this reason, the length of corridors will generally increase as compared to the present situation. These will be prioritised in the subsidy policy also in future. The objective of the updated version of the document is to implement measures providing free migration to fish and other water animals in an effective and systematic way, especially on watercourses of international and national importance.

The preparation of large infrastructural works has long been criticised for  being time-demanding and ineffective. Drafts of amendments to construction law have repeatedly been submitted in order to shorten and facilitate the approval process. Recently, a proposal for its integral recodification was submitted. The actual administrative process aimed at realising a construction is however to a great extent the final stage in the preparation of a construction. Efforts for systematic changes in building permit procedures should therefore be preceded by a comprehensive analysis of shortcomings already in the stage prior to the building permit procedure. It is not an overstatement to say that the stage of project preparation and specification of the project at different levels in spatial planning documentation have much greater margins than the building permit stage.