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Research, Surveys and Data Management

Nature Conservation 2/2013 21. 6. 2013 Research, Surveys and Data Management Print article in pdf

Hošek M.: When the National Park really is the National Park? The Global Protected Area Categorisati

Světová kategorizace chráněných území v tuzemské praxi

author: Michael Hošek

Hošek M.: When the National Park really is the National Park? The Global Protected Area Categorisati

In the Czech Republic, classification of protected areas into the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Protected Area Management Categories has been applied as the information attached to each Specially Protected Area (SPAs) for more than ten years.

Nevertheless, the categorization is often misunderstood or misused. Therefore, the article tries to describe the basic sense of the individual IUCN categories and to compare it with the approach applied at the national level. In the Czech Republic, SPAs classification into the categories aiming at spontaneous development, with no human interventions in nature has been preferred. The approach is probably based on the wrong assumption, that those categories are more valuable than the other. At the end, the author tries to disprove such a approach as a incorrect one, highlighting that each IUCN Protected Area Management Category is of its own irreplaceable importance and all of them are generally of the same importance for nature conservation and management.