What a difference a ten days make.

The day after I drove back to the Czech Republic from England I did what I always do on my return and went for a walk in the forest above the house. I went of course with mushroom basket in hand. I returned with it full of giant chanterelles - as you can see from the picture above. I had two meals of these treasures and froze enough for probably six more. I duly made a mental note to go back this week.

So it was that a Czech friend and I arrived in the forest this afternoon, but despite nearly two hours walking we found only small and sometimes dessicated mushrooms. This seems just weird to me as we have had several days' worth of rain in the village in the intervening time. Maybe our weird microclimate meant that the forest above us did not receive any rain. Mind you I'm not complaining I still have enough for a couple of meals and there's only limited space in the freezer compartment (which is full of wild strawberries, cherries and now chanterelles).

One point of note is that this wet and for the Czechs mild summer has had an interesting impact. The Prague News is announcing that as a consequence the famous bark beetle is dying off. It seems the environmentalists were right - nature is taking its course and intervening to restore balance and the Sumava authorities' drastic logging actions may not have been necessary afterall.

Update on Sumava Protest

The stand-off between environmental protesters and the Sumava Park Authority and its loggers continues. The protesters have been chaining themselves to condemned trees in an effort to stop the felling of trees in a restricted biological area. Apart that is for a brief period when there was a bomb scare, which the protesters claimed was designed to portray them in a bad light and seems to a cynic like me to be a means of getting them to leave the area. If so it worked briefly, but before the loggers could move in the protesters returned.

The protesters are arguing that the trees should not be felled and removed as proposed by the Authorities but left to decay and nature allowed to take its course. The Authorities claim that the trees need to be removed so that neighbouring trees are not attacked by the beetles.

Politicians have been divided over the issue. Now the European Commision is looking into what is happening, as the Sumava is part of a network of protected nature areas in Europe. The argument has been going on for some time. Back in November last year the former Park Director resigned, environmentalists believe due to pressure from the environment minister. The new director is Jan Stráský, former Prime Minister, who has been praised by the Czech President and climate-change denier Vaclav Klaus for his agressive approach to combatting the beetle. One thing seems certain -  the issue is unlikely to be resolved through dialogue as the two sides have a totally different attitude to the forest and nature generally.

Sumava Logging

Regular readers of this blog will know my views about the danger of the Sumava National Park's response to the problem of bark beetles. No one is underestimating the damage to the forest of the beetle. I have seen areas full of dead trees, but I do not believe that the wholesale clearance of trees which the Park authority proposes is an appropriate response.

Nor am I the only one. Five days ago a group of environmentalists (Czech Friends of the Earth) moved into an protected nature reserve which was under threat. In their press release they state:

The head of the National Park Šumava Jan Strasky launched a massive felling hundreds of trees in a unique mountain forest around Bird Creek on Modrava. Large-scale use of chainsaws is however in stark contradiction with the law. Friends of the Earth, while the park management has repeatedly pointed out that the felling without permission is illegal, but without result,. Sumava lovers from different places of the Republic, therefore, from this morning trying to prevent illegal logging on the spot. Friends of the Earth also serves initiative of the Czech Environmental Inspectorate, to stop the devastation of the park.

So far there has been a stand-off between the protestors and the authorities. I'll keep you informed of developments.

Update to Harvesting The Forest

Radio Prague has just reported:






Sumava National Park director resigns





The director of the Sumava National Park, Frantisek Krejci, has tendered his resignation to the Minister of the Environment, Pavel Drobil. A ministry spokesperson told the press that Mr Krejci had
resigned in order to facilitate the new conception for the park promoted by the ministry. Frantisek Krejci was appointed by the Green Party in 2007 when it controlled the environment ministry in order to fulfil a policy of non-intervention against the bark beetle infestation that has devastated parts of the forest. Environmental organisations say the resignation was forced by the new ministry, which want to take a head on approach to the problem.




As I said in the previous post a lot of people are very cynical about the Government, suggesting that it is using the bark beetle as an excuse to justify wholesale removal of trees in the forest. This news seems to confirm this.

Bark Beetles

I was disappointed to see, when I made my visit to the forest above our village, that there has been a lot of tree felling. Swathes of forest have been felled and some of my favourite spots for mushrooms disturbed in the process. Then I noticed these strange boxes on poles.

They are cause for concern, they are bark beetle traps. The bark beetle has been responsible for major damage in the Sumava National Park, sometimes called the Green Roof of Europe. Opinion is divided between those who wish to fell and dispose of infected trees and those who see the beetle's damage as part of a natural process. Direct action has happened with protesters literally hugging trees.

I am normally in the conservationists' side on issues such as this, but find myself in a quandary. I am sufficiently old to remember the destruction wrought by the dutch elm disease in Britain. I have a vivid memory of a fine line of old elms that stood on the top bank of a local field, one of which housed a rope down which the local boy scouts would slide. And I remember running and catching the leaves as the sick trees suddenly let them fall. For a few years the barren corpses of the elms stood until unsound they too fell. England lost a major natural feature, its elm trees, in a matter of months and they have not come back properly. All because of a bark beetle and the fungus that it carried. I would hate to watch the same happen here.