Prague, Aug 25 (CTK) – The Czech Senate supported on Thursday as substantiated a petition launched by South Bohemia residents and calling for the state to pass a bill enabling interventions in the Sumava National Park (NPS) forests, including tree cutting, with the aim to prevent the landscape from drying up.
It recommended the adoption of the petitioners’ proposals, which are also a part of a new bill submitted by the government and now discussed by the Chamber of Deputies.
In the debate preceding the vote, many senators, however, warned that the bill, if passed, would enable the Environment Ministry to declare up to a half of the NPS an area left to spontaneous development where interventions are completely banned.
The Senate almost unanimously supported “the preservation of Sumava’s green forests as a significant source of water and an element securing the stabilisation of the temperature and soil.”
An opposite goal has been pursued by a petition launched by the Friends of the Earth environmental group, which says nature protection should be the NPS’s priority and up to a half of the park area should be left to spontaneous development.
Their proposal has been supported by the Environment Ministry which has submitted a relevant bill on its own.
The petition of the environmentalists, which the Senate will discuss in October, has been signed by more than 60,000 people.
The South Bohemians’ petition in support of interventions in the wild has been signed by 13,000 people.
The South Bohemians want the nature protection bill to contain a formulation saying that “the water management and climate function of the NPS forests stands above the nature protection interest.”
Otherwise the other half of the Sumava forests will die in consequence of bark-beetle calamities, they say.
As a result, mainly the forests surrounding the springs of rivers in Sumava should be preserved to keep their retention qualities and their role as water sources in South Bohemia, the South Bohemians wrote in their petition.
