Endangered Animal Species Return to Czech Nature
Copyright 2001 Czech News Agency (CTK)
November 10, 2001
PRAGUE, Nov 10 ; (MS) - Animal species which have become almost extinct dozens years ago are returning to Czech nature thanks to persistent effort of nature conservationists and the time is not far away when regulated hunting of the European beaver may have to be started, Milos Andera has told CTK.
Andera, head of the zoological department of the Nature Sciences Museum in Prague, said that the return of extinct species had been made possible by conservationists who had artificially re-stocked selected habitats with them.
He said that elks had returned to south Bohemia, beavers had been established in north Bohemia, along the River Morava in Moravia and in south-west Bohemia, and the lynx can now be found in any larger forest.
Andera said that reduced farming activities and a less intensive use of artificial fertilisers had contributed to an increase in the numbers of rare species. Though it is hardly numerically demonstrable, there is more insects, amphibians and bats in nature, and the voice of once rare quails and rails can more often be heard in meadows today, Andera said.
Conservationists in the Vsetin district, north Moravia, have prepared for winter the ponds where protected amphibians live.
"The banks have been undermined by muskrats this year, so we must fix them," Milan Oralek from the Czech Conservationists' Association in Valasske Mezirici, told CTK.
He said the conservationists wanted the ponds in Semetin to be declared a specially protected area. "Every year thousands of frogs, spotted newts and other animals are born there," Oralek said.
Divers from the Kajman club in Cheb, west Bohemia, want to find suitable localities for the rare river crab.
Jindrich Papez from Kajman said that the club wanted to launch artificial breeding of the crab which until the 1970s had been a common inhabitant of Czech streams. But pollution and inappropriate interference in the ecosystem have caused the crab population to be almost exterminated.
Conservationists elsewhere in the country also try to save the crab species, but they would not say where. People, who want to diversify their meals are a bigger danger to the crabs than predatory fish, Papez said.
An artificially created arm of the Luzni pond in the Cheb district, west Bohemia, has this year been stocked with dozens of young specimens of the endangered river pearl mussel.
Michaela Braunova from the Nature and Landscape Conservation Agency, said that the number of mussels had approximately halved to 10,000 over the past five years.
She said this was due to an inappropriate composition of land as a result of the absence of extensive farming in border areas.
To save the mussels, conservationists relocated to a suitable stream a population of trout on whose gills the mussel larvae live for eight months. Afterwards they grow on the bottom of the stream or an artificial vessel from where they are returned after four to five years back to the waters of their native Luzni stream. There they live for 60 to 80 years, Braunova said.
Floods are bad for people, but may benefit some animal species, including the rare kingfisher. Conservationist Miroslav Dvorsky said that he and his colleagues had built the first artificial nets for kingfishers along the River Becva, north Moravia.
He said they "were surprised to find out that kingfishers have occupied 17 nesting holes in the banks" and added that the birds had probably returned in after the 1997 flodos. The rushing waters then broke stone banks and kingfishers could make holes in the uncovered soil.
Dvorsky said that the conservationists had agreed with people reconstructing the Becva banks to leave open the short sections where the birds nested.
Endangered however are not only animals, but also plants. Conservationists from Vlasim, central Bohemia, have decided to safe flower-clad meadows below the Blanik Mountain (638m).
They collect seeds from 12 fundamental plant species, Karel Kriz said.
The conservationists will sow the seeds at their own land next spring and in the course of a few years they will secure enough seeds for the future.
They use the experience of conservationists from Hodonin, south Moravia, who have done the same in the nature protected area of the White Carpathians area the highest mountain of which is Velka Javorina (970m).