Dlouha Louka, North Bohemia, July 20 (CTK) – The Czech cabinet will discuss ways to renew the forests in Krusne hory (Ore Mountains), including the subsidies private owners may gain for this purpose, Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka (Social Democrats, CSSD) said during his visit to the area yesterday.
About a half of the forests is owned by the Lesy CR state-run forest company. The rest belongs to private owners, towns and churches.
The Agriculture Ministry wants to improve the forest soil quality by liming, Sobotka said.
Lesy CR reportedly plans to renew over 450 hectares of forests in the area along the Saxon border in northwestern Bohemia.
The company’s investments were 80 million crowns in 2014 and a similar sum will be invested in the Ore Mountains this year.
Sobotka said it is necessary that the other owners of forests in the area invest in the renewal as well.
“It is necessary to launch special programmes to make subsidies available for private owners, including towns, so that their parts of forest are subject to renewal as well,” Sobotka said.
Environment Minister Richard Brabec (ANO) said the private owners may gain subsidies from the Environment operational programme, in which Czechs may draw up to 400 million crowns from EU funds by 2020.
These subsidies can only go to municipal, private and possibly also church-owned forests, but [the state] Lesy CR is not eligible for them, Brabec said.
North Bohemian forest managers are especially worried about Gemmamyces piceae, a fungal pathogen that has been massively devastating spruces, the most widespread tree in the Ore Mountains, since 2009.
In addition, an aphid calamity has endangered local spruces in the past year.
Experts say the renewal of the Ore Mountains forests, which were damaged by strong immissions in the 1970s and the 1980s, will take many years.
($1=24.843 crowns)
