Shame in the heart of Europe

In the capital of a small country in the middle of Europe, plans are afoot to destroy tens of thousands of trees in the last forest that remains to that city.

This is no bad fairy tale, it is reality in 21st century Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic. The forest is Klánovice Forest, the only continuous green oasis on the eastern rim of a rapidly expanding city.

A part of this forest, comprising of 1 290 000 m2 , is to be sacrificed in favour of a private investor, who wishes to construct a golf course in the middle. To appease ‘the greenies’, the investor would be ‘prepared to sacrifice only around 70 000 m2’ of healthy trees.

The efforts of local government and residents to legally defend the forest are failing. The voices of 23,000 protesting residents of the city of Prague, including those expressed in ‘The Petition for the Preservation of the Integrity of Klánovice Forest’, repeatedly fall on deaf ears. In the face of the arrogance of newly-emergent power and money in a country which only 19 years ago liberated itself from the fifty-year-long grip of totalitarianism, the application of standard democratic procedures continues to be seemingly helpless. Any legitimate claim for the conservation of the forest - which holds the status of a nature reserve within the European Union Natura 2000 network - appears defenseless.

How is this possible?

Because both of the decision-making organs in this dirty business favour the building of a golf course! By deliberate inaction in its statutory obligations, the Prague City Council, represented by Mayor Pavel Bém (ODS), allows the investor to continue preparing for his definitive intrusion into the forest. The decisions of the Ministry of Agriculture, under the leadership of Minister Petr Gandalovič (ODS), also tolerate the outrageous contract - relating to the lease of the forest areas - made by the state forest management authority with the investor.

The campaign to preserve the forest is exhausting and in these domestic conditions has almost led to a dead end. That would however result in the destruction of a functional forest and the creation of yet another golf course, the Nth in a city of a mere million inhabitants.

And so we now turn to you with this brief account of the fate, in 2008, of a precious forest in a seemingly democratic Central European country. We believe that you are neither indifferent to this battle of healthy common sense versus complete arbitrariness, nor to the future of human existence in the hastily destroyed remains of our natural environment.

Please support the conservation of Klánovice Forest!

Please inform your circle of friends, mobilise your local politicians, contact any persons of influence, so that the powerful in the Czech Republic yet hear a voice that cannot be deafened! Our country is a part of Europe and your opinion – not burdened by knowledge of the pithy battles fought in the Czech political sandpit – will bring a global dimension to a small struggle to preserve a local wooded area – a dimension that this rare and beautiful forest deserves.< -->