Region nods to reserve extension enabling preservation of herds

CTK

The Central Bohemia Region will provide 205 hectares of land for an extension of the Milovice nature reserve, without which the local unique herds of ungulates would have to be reduced, Regional Governor Jaroslava Pokorna Jermanova told reporters yesterday.

The reserve with wild horses, wisents and aurochs, an extinct and newly restored wild cattle species, spreads on 75 hectares of a former military area between Milovice and Benatky nad Jizerou, northeast of Prague.

The Czech Landscape NGO, which operates the reserve, said in early August that out of the local ungulates, dozens would have to be transferred or put out due to the protracted negotiations about the extension of the reserve, which had become too small to house the swelling horse and wild cattle population.

Pokorna Jermanova said today the region will loan additional land to the reserve for ten years under tougher loaning conditions and would provide no regular subsidies to Czech Landscape.

Czech Landscape director Dalibor Dostal said the provision of new land is the first step towards averting the reduction of the herds. However, to save them definitively, the NGO has to quickly negotiate about subsidies and seek the assessments that are needed for the reserve extension. The procedure must be completed in a few months. It depends on the concrete responsible clerks whether it will proceed quickly, Dostal said.

"The Regional Council has toughened the [land loaning] conditions and it wants to be regularly informed on what has been happening in the given area and how the original goal has been pursued. The original goal was not the wild horse breeding but the salvation of the local original wildlife," Pokorna Jermanova pointed out.

The Milovice nature reserve was established in 2015. It is the first area in the world where all the three original European big ungulate species live together. Their grazing changes the local landscape and enables the return of a number original plant, insect and animal species.

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