The Journal is published by the Nature Conservation Agency of the Czech Republic in cooperation with the Cave Administration of the Czech Republic, the Krkonoše Mts. National Park Administration, the Bohemian Forest Mts. National Park Administration, the Podyjí National Park Administration and the The Bohemian Switzerland National Park Administration. It has been published since 1946.
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Nature Conservation 5/2013 — 30. 11. 2013 — On Nature in the Czech Republic — Print article in pdf
Zajíček P.: The Výpustek Cave Reveals its Secret
The first written references to the Výpustek Cave formed by underground activities of the Křtinský potok Brook had been made by quacks in the early 17thcentury.
The cave was often visited by humans. Explorations made by Count Hugo Franz Altgraf zu Salm-Reifferscheidt were an important step in speleological survey history there: knowledge gained by his visits to the cave has been displaying some uncertainty. The Výpustek Cave was located on princely house of Liechtesteins private lands and members of the nobility family guided visitors there as early as in the 18thcentury. In 1807, the royal engineer Antonín Lola hand-drew the very first map of all accessible corridors. In the 19thcentury, the Výpustek Cave became a subject of archaeological and speleological surveys. The surveyors put a lot of efforts into seeking for fabulous spaces described by Salm. A significant part of the spaces was discovered only due to phosphate clay mining in the 1920s because at the time the space profiles were made bigger by some meters. At some sites, rock barriers were removed and a narrow corridor labyrinth became an extensive space. In addition, complete skeletons of Pleistocene fauna were found there due to mining. In the 1930s, the Czechoslovak Army built an ammunition dump in the Výpustek Cave. When transforming the cave, soldiers blasted some parts of rocks away. In the World War II, the Czechoslovak Army was replaced by German soldiers and an underground factory producing aircraft engine devices was there. The last intervention was made there in the early 1960s when a fallout shelter for an underground command post was built by the Czechoslovak Peoples Army there. In 2001, the site was declassified, and five years later, the Výpustek Cave was made accessible for the public, becoming a show cave managed by the Cave Administration of the Czech Republic. At present, an interesting archeological and historical exposition is under construction on a visitor path. Visitor can also see some other parts of the cave, particularly those with well-preserved corridors modulation and karst decoration, from the cave trail.