Sustainable tourism in Šumava national park: Difference between revisions

The Šumava, which is the Czech name for the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohemian_Forest Bohemian Forest], is currently the largest natural wilderness area in the central European cultural landscape. Since the half of the 20th century the most valuable parts of the Bohemian Forest were recognized by nature conservationists as national parks (NP) – there was declared the first German NP already in 1970 (the Bavarian Forest National Park) which was largely extended in 1997. The neighbouring Šumava Protected Landscape Area (PLA) was declared on the Czech side in 1963, and on its territory the Šumava National Park was established in 1991. This step has gradually caused series of conflicts between nature protectionists with (not only) local inhabitants and enterprises and this situation appeared to have no solution over more than two decades.

Under such circumstances, the Šumava NP Council does not create a favourable environment for creative and responsible cooperation between the local representatives and the NP Authority. Mayors of all the municipalities with an area within the NP territory (Table 1), together with representatives of the two administrative regions and the mountain rescue service, are mandatory members of the Council. These 25 members in total form a relevant majority of the Council. The Council indeed is supposed to negotiate strategic documents of the national park, such as zoning, management plan, or visitor regulation. Instead of approving knowledge-based and science-wise solutions for nature conservation and sustainable life, the Council has become a ‘board of regional regents’ without any accountability. Some full-time mayors often used to act, more or less deliberately, as latent lobbyists for hidden entrepreneurs, developers, or land owners. Some of the Council meetings have served only for tasking the NP directors, or for formal approval of documents fulfilling wishes of regional politicians and developers. The number of scientists, complaining against these practices, was reduced by the political director two years ago to be able control the majority in the Council. The obligatory Council setup in fact allows for overbalancing of such hidden interests and often overrules actual nature conservation in the Šumava NP if the director is not tough enough or even is proactive.  

During the entire history of the Šumava NP, the Authority has largely focused on the NP agenda, such as forestry and pest control, zoning and visitor regulation. Curiously, the Authority has hardly fulfilled the predetermination of the PLA territory as an actual buffer zone for the NP. For instance, the management plans of the NP and PLA have been largely incompatible, sometimes indeed applying contradictory measures to similar habitats, and have never been synchronised either. Similarly, the Authority has so far given up applying the status of the Šumava BR to the joint NP and PLA territory. An obvious reason is the fact that the BR has got no legal framework in the national legislation and, thus, neither financial nor personal support by the Ministry of the Environment or the Czech Government. In our opinion, the UNESCO BR concept would be a good framework for solving the most controversial issues and an excellent tool for sustainable tourism and overall development of the entire region. As a matter of fact, the existence of the Šumava NP represents a great tourism potential not only for the six villages located within the NP or others in its territory but for many other municipalities in the Bohemian Forest region. The Šumava NP and PLA Authority, however, has not made a serious attempt to implement the UNESCO BR concept in the region in the past 23 years.