2024-03-16 03:57:04
CTK
Updated 23 hours ago
Lumberjacks and height workers cannot work on Gabriel’s Trail and most of Edmund’s Gorge. Both tourist destinations in the Czech Switzerland National Park were destroyed by fire in the summer of 2022. Removing the trees would be dangerous for them and would destroy the character of the natural monuments.
This was shown by the results of last year’s test intervention by foresters over Edmund’s Gorge. The popular spots will be closed for another three years, after which the park administration will check whether the danger has passed. Administration spokesman Tomáš Salov informed about this on Thursday.
Cutting down the trees would release the rocks. The intervention would thus be unsafe for the foresters. The work would not ensure safety even for tourists due to falling boulders. At the same time, studies commissioned by the park administration after a test intervention over Edmund’s Gorge last July documented and pointed out that nature in both areas needs time to recover from the fire.
In addition, mining would devastate the rare nature, the reserve administration said. According to the administration, partial forestry works on a roughly one-kilometer section from the Border Bridge to the so-called log buildings at the upper dock of the gorge are being considered. The park administration is preparing it for this year. In Edmund’s gorge, the Hřensko village operated boat trips. Due to the closure, it loses revenue to the budget.
“It’s more about the fact that we replace the role of the state on many fronts,” said Hřensk Deputy Mayor Robert Mareš. He added that the municipality pays large sums for firefighters, replaces the work of the state police and pays a lot of money for the municipal police. “It’s costing us all a lot of money and we’re missing the revenue from Edmund’s Gorge,” he added.
“As can be seen from expert studies and in the field, the still-standing trees affected by the fire maintain moisture on the exposed southern slopes of Edmund’s gorge and Gabriela’s trail. They are home to an extremely diverse number of insects, birds nest in their cavities and bats also use them,” said the director of administration reservation Petr Kříž.
He added that mining would disturb the weak soil layer of mosses and seedlings of local trees, which formed at the fire site and is the basis of a new generation of forest. The new generation of trees, on the other hand, stabilizes slopes disturbed over time better than human intervention. The park administration will monitor the situation in both locations. In three years, they will reassess whether the extreme danger for visitors has passed and it will be possible to send loggers into the field.
The National Park Service also unveiled a maintenance plan for both tourist and emergency roads on Thursday. The length of the road network is 290 kilometers. The Ministry of the Environment has prepared an amendment to the Act on Nature and Landscape Protection.
“It is a proposal to change the law, which will allow the individual administrations of national parks to maintain the entire road network in the long term. And at the same time, even those areas that are dangerous due to calamities, for example forests affected by the bark beetle, visitors can only enter at their own risk ,” said Minister Petr Hladík (KDU-ČSL). The change would allow the park management to re-mark or open a number of routes for tourists.