Sumava must be protected against bark-beetle - Czech minister

He said this practice that his predecessors from the Green Party applied would damage not only private, community and state property, but mainly nature.

He said he does not understand why the Friends of the Earth NGO, co-financed from taxpayers´ money, continues to disrespect the court´s decision that enjoined it from organising further actions against bark-beetle hit trees cutting in Sumava.

Czech environmentalits have been blocking for several days some of the trees marked for being cut before the bark-beetle leaves them and spreads to the surrounding forests next week.

Police were leading them away from the forest. They handcuffed some of them.

Today, only two of them have tied themselves to trees.

About 70 environmentalists are now allegedly moving in the Modrava vicinity now.

The environmentalists demand that the hit trees be not cut in the locality in which forests were left to spontaneous development before.

They say the park is acting unlawfully when it is cutting the trees because it does not have the necessary exceptions for doing so.

SNP director Jan Strasky and the Czech Environment Inspection (CIZP), however, say the exceptions are not needed.

The SNP authority has marked 4000 trees for cutting. It claims the trees must be eliminated by next week, otherwise the beetle will leave them and destroy eight to ten-times more trees.

Some 200 Sumava inhabitants protested in Modrava against the activists today.

The inhabitants carried posters saying "Let Us Save Sumava - Drive Friends of the Earth from the Sumava National Park" and "Sumava is Home to Man - We Are Nothing Less Than the Bark-beetle."

Twenty-two Sumava municipalities sent a letter to politicians and authorities today, calling on them to terminate the "dangerous natural experiment."

They write that leaving nature to its spontaneous development leads to the propagation of the bark-beetle, therefore people should more help the forests.

Author: ČTK
www.ctk.cz