Prague, Feb 21 (CTK) – Czech activists handed an appeal to deputies yesterday, asking them to back the Chamber of Deputies’ bill on national parks, not its rival Senate version, which, they said, distorts the former bill as a compromise between nature protection and the interests of municipalities.
Hundreds of people joined the demonstration that the environmentalists staged outside the Chamber of Deputies which is to decide on the bill later yesterday.
The appeal was signed by tens of thousands of people, including scientists, artists as well as politicians such as Greens chairman Matej Stropnicky and TOP 09 chairman Miroslav Kalousek.
“The bill, originally passed by the Chamber of Deputies, was an optimal compromise between the positions espoused by top-level nature protection experts and the advocates of the development of the towns concerned,” Professor Pavel Kindlmann, from Charles University’s Faculty of Science, said, adding that he was speaking on behalf of 400 his colleagues and tens of thousands of students.
The critics say the Senate version of the bill plays into the hands of developers and mining companies and endangers the preservation of untouched nature.
“The goal and mission of national parks is to protect nature, not the development of towns,” Kindlmann said.
The Friends of the Earth movement said that 100,000 people have supported the appeal online in the past weeks.
Observers widely expect the Chamber of Deputies to support its own version of the bill again and reject the Senate one, in spite of President Milos Zeman’s plan to personally promote the latter at the session yesterday.
rtj/dr/pv
