Cease-fire in Czech bark-beetle war

The SNP management wants to have the afflicted trees either cut or barked while standing.

The activists insist on the view that the SNP has no right to cut trees in the locality.

The SNP is afraid that if the trees are not cut down, the bark-beetle outbreak will spread to the surrounding forests.

In the past week, the activists staged a tree sitting against the logging amid serious protests by the locals, while the cutting continued.

The activists said they had not found any logger in the six localities near Modrava today.

The said not a single tree had been felled in the spontaneous development zone called the Ptaci potok (Bird Brook).

However, the NPS management said the loggers had managed to fell 93 tree, although the plan was slightly higher.

The police did not have to intervene for the first time since Monday, when the tree sitting and cutting started.

"While some 20-24 of our people watched the situation for eight to nine hours, we did not hear a single power saw and did not see a single new fallen tree," activist Vratislav Voznik said.

"Ninety-three trees fell today, though we wanted 100," NPS senior manager Jan Becvar told CTK.

"Four two-member logging gangs were moved from one place to another. The activists did not hear us," Becvar said.

A forester said the NPS management has chosen what he called a "cat and mouse game" tactic. The forest workers were deeper inside the forest where they could not be seen by hikers and activists.

NPS spokesman Pavel Pechousek said some 1600 trees had been cut by today.

"We have not yet finished one half of the planned work. We will certainly continue felling for the whole next week," Pechousek said.

"The police did not have to intervene today because the loggers worked farther inside the forest. There was no conflict," police spokeswoman Dana Ladmanova told CTK.

In the past five days, the police detained over trespassing and then released 83 activists.

On Friday, an anonymous source said a bomb had been planted in the national park, but the police found out that it was a false alarm.

The solution to the bark-beetle outbreak is one of the main environmental disputes in the Czech Republic.

Environmentalists say the forests in the SNP should be left to spontaneous development as nature itself will sooner or later defeat the pest while the spruces on which it feeds and which were seeded in the area in the 19th century, will eventually be replaced with other, mostly deciduous trees that are immune to the bark-beetle.

On the other hand, locals say this may last decades and argue that they cannot watch passively while the forests are being annihilated.

Author: ČTK
www.ctk.cz