Podrobné vyhledávání v článcích

“It wasn’t until we were inspecting the quarry on September 14, 1950—Director Pastora, Foreman Frič, Duha, and me, Karel Mareš—that I was walking above the quarry when I reached a spot where the quarryman Frant. Štěpán called out to me, ‘Foreman, I just found a hole in the quarry wall after the blast. There was a hole 10 meters long, 4 meters wide, and 3 meters high. A 13-meter-long passage leads from this cave…” recalled Karel Mareš, foreman of the Houba´s Quarry at Zlatý kůň/Golden Horse Hill near the village of Koněprusy (Central Bohemia), in his memoirs in 1997.

One of the significant milestones in nature conservation in the Czech Republic was the land reform of the First Czechoslovak Republic (the term used for the former Czechoslovakia in 1918 – 1938), which took place a century ago. Its aim was to establish a more socially just system of land ownership, expand the middle class among the agricultural population, and create self-sufficient medium-sized farms that would drive the agriculture modernization. The relevant authorities of the First Republic sought, as part of the reform, to ensure the conservation, protection and management of the natural and cultural heritage of what was then Czechoslovakia.

In the Czech Republic, communication with, education of and raising awareness among the general public and the target groups (CEPA) has long been one of the main priorities of the State Nature Conservancy. One of the effective CEPA´s forms is the provision of information directly in the field using the visitor infrastructure. Visitor centres are the most expensive facilities to build and operate when it comes to providing information in specific areas. The demand for building visitor centres has been constantly growing.

On June 26, 2025, the President of the Czech Republic signed an amendment to Forest Act No. 289/1995 Gazette, 30 years after adoption of the current act. The drafting and discussion of the amendment had evoked much debate and concern about the future of forests in the Czech Republic, particularly in the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic, and had also been accompanied by quite some misinformation. This contribution does not aim to provide an exhaustive list of all changes or comments on them. Instead, we will focus critically on those that were frequently discussed even within circles close to nature conservation community.

In December 2024, the Government of the Czech Republic approved the 8^th amendment to the national list of Sites of Community Importance/Special Areas of Conservation (SCI/SAC) sites, the expert preparation of which had been entrusted by the Ministry of the Environment of the Czech Republic (MoE) in 2021 to the Nature Conservation Agency of the Czech Republic (NCA CR). The amendment responds to requirements of the European Commission (EC) arising from the assessment of the sufficiency of SCI/SAC sites in the Czech Republic to ensure the protection of species and habitats, as reflected in ongoing infringement proceedings.

Our everyday life is fundamentally influenced by ecosystems surrounding us. If these are healthy, they provide us in return with a wide range of services, such as fertile soil, clean air, clean water, and more. However, ecosystems have unfortunately too often been used for economic benefits, which has led and still leads to habitat destruction, extensive damage to the biosphere and to natural richness (United Nations, 2021).

The Ukrainian brook lamprey (Eudontomyzon mariae) is a non-parasitic potamodromous lamprey species. Together with the more common European brook lamprey (Lampetra planeri), it is one of only two lamprey species currently found in the Czech Republic. Since its discovery in 1968 it is known from a single site, Račí potok/Crayfish Brook (also called Račinka) near the town of Velké Losiny in the Šumperk region, northern Moravia (Kux 1969). Ukrainian brook lamprey is classified as a critically endangered species in the Czech Republic´ s fauna and protected at both the national and EU levels. Račinka SCI (CZ0713004) was specifically included in the national list of Natura 2000 sites to protect the rare lamprey there. Since 2017 the Nature Conservation Agency of the Czech Republic (NCA CR) has also been implementing a regional action plan (RAP) for the Ukrainian brook lamprey.

The fire that struck České Švýcarsko/Bohemian Switzerland National Park (northern Bohemia) in the summer of 2022 had spread across an area of approximately ten square kilometres. In the aftermath of the fire, a wide range of societal and professional questions emerged concerning the extent to which similar events can be prevented in the future without compromising the fundamental purpose and mission of National Parks.