Nature Conservation Legislation

Act No. 114/1992 Gazette on Nature Conservation and Landscape Protection came into force on 1 June 1992, so in 2022 30 years have passed since this most important legal regulation in nature conservation was adopted. Let us, from the position of co-legislator of the Act’s original version and current legislative lawyer at the Ministry of the Environment of the Czech Republic, recall some of the context regarding the creation of this legislation and evaluate its current state.

In the Czech Republic, principles of current special species protection come from the second half of the 1980s. They entered into practice by Act No. 114/1992 Gazette on Nature Conservation and Landscape Protection, as amended later, and since that time they – except small adjustments due to transposing and implementing the European Union legislation before joining the EU- have not been changed. Moreover, knowledge has been significantly improved during the thirty past years and the state of nature and the landscape has also significantly shifted across the whole country´s territory. Long-term negative effects are currently amplified and multiplied by climate change impacts. It is clear that species protection tools have been in many aspects outdated and their effectivity has been insufficient. We are not able to halt species richness/diversity decline and loss and to effectively protect, conserve or manage habitats of the individual species as a basic precondition of their survival. A lot of necessary changes can be reach only by those in methodologies and approaches in performing State/Public Administration and setting out economic/financial tools without changes in legislation. Nevertheless effective protection and providing the most threatened species with management need new legislation dealing with Special Species Protection, conservation and management

Although the first national list of Special Areas of Conservation (SAC) was adopted by the Government of the Czech Republic following the country´s accession to the European Union in 2005, the question of its representativeness for species and habitats of European importance, and therefore the sufficiency of the EU Natura 2000 network of protected areas in the Czech Republic, has not yet been closed by the European Commission. Over the course of the Natura 2000 network´s existence, the Czech Republic has tried to deal with the identified shortcomings in particular with three major additions, most recently in 2016. Nevertheless, we are now awaiting another more extensive update of the national SAC list. The proposed amendment and the reasons for its development are explained on the following pages.

Fireworks evoke mixed feelings across society. Part of the population welcomes fireworks as extraordinary entertainment, whereas another part perceives such entertainment rather negatively, for various individual reasons. This article originated from the current need to assess the harmfulness of fireworks to wild birds from the perspective of their biology and the need to place specific cases within the legislative framework of Act No. 114/1992 Coll., on Nature and Landscape Protection (“ANLP”), as amended.

We are currently observing changes in the landscape at an unprecedented rate. We do not have in mind here the often mentioned impacts of climate change, but particularly the consequences of changes in land use by man. A century ago, when a third of the inhabitants of the Czech Republic still made a living from agriculture and forestry and the average farm size did not even exceed 5 hectares (Kučera 1994), the landscape was in many ways exploited more intensively, but at the same time in a much more mosaic way. At present, only a tenth of them participate in land management, while industrialised farming takes place in large, consolidated areas and the management of economically marginal areas and traditional, more labour-intensive forms of farming have been abandoned.

The article deals with legal nature conservation and landscape protection provisions in Specially Protected Areas (SPAs) related to hunting and fishing rights.

The Great Cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo) has been still explicitly specified among wildlife species in Article 3, letter c) of Act No. 115/2000 Gazette on Providing Compensation for Damages Caused by Selected Specially Protected Animals, as amended later.