The support of NET4GAS Closer to Nature for ČSOP also extends to hands-on conservationist work
In Spálené Poříčí, members of the local chapter of the Czech Union for Nature Conservation worked with high school students to plant one hundred deciduous trees – ashes, maples, linden trees, hornbeams, and oaks – along a land reclamation ditch. This 300-metre line of trees across intensively farmed fields will serve as a bio-corridor (i.e. a strip of land through which various animals may safely pass, and move about, to navigate a landscape under human use and cultivation), but also as a windbreak.
In Police in the Vsetín District, the local chapter of the Czech Union for Nature Conservation ("Choryňská stráž") established an arboretum – that is, a forest garden sampling and showcasing various species of woods. The intention of this particular arboretum is to focus on our domestic species, but a few more common foreign species have also been planted for comparison. The various types of wood have been grouped thematically, making it easier for visitors to grasp the difference between one species and another. As of press time, the arboretum is home to 47 different types of trees and shrubs, with more planting planned for the coming spring. The arboretum is open to everyone for free, and its primary declared purpose is environmental education.
By contrast, yet another local ČSOP chapter ("Klenice" in Podhradí near Mladá Boleslav) has been taking care of truly ancient representatives among our leafy friends, arranging for the treatment of three memorial linden trees. In collaboration with expert arborists, the crowns of these almost bicentennial "old ladies" received professional health treatment, consisting of pruning, strain relief, and clamps and anchors preventing the trees from splitting and breaking apart.
However, planting and caring for trees is not all that conservationists do. Sometimes, taking trees down is in fact the appropriate or necessary measure. This is particularly true in the case of rocky steppes: immensely valuable habitats in terms of the role they play within nature, home to numerous rare plant and animal species, and for millennia used as pastures, but in recent decades growing over and thus going out of existence. Using saws and weed-whackers, the nature conservation society "Pražská pastvina" (Prague Pasture) brought one such site above the Radotín Valley on the south-western edge of Prague back from the brink, and prepared it for the resumption of pastoral grazing.
Having said all that, the life of a conservationist is not always about trees. Take the Jinošov Valley near Vlašim, a "private reservation" in the ownership of the Vlašim chapter of the Czech Union for Nature Conservation: years of devoted care have turned this valley into a literal paradise for amphibian species, and for the rare fire-bellied toad in particular. The latter needs pools of stagnant water to reproduce pools which over the course of the years tend to grow over with reeds, and thus require periodic rejuvenation. In this manner, Thanks to the NET4GAS Closer to Nature programme, five ponds that had almost disappeared were restored to life in this manner last year, and one entirely new pool was added to boot.
