How did this ever happen?

You may well ask how it is at all possible that a unique and protected forest can be threatened by the construction of yet another golf course?  How can the situation arise in which a natural forest and artificial golf course are pitted against each other in terms of equal significance and public interest?

 

It is because the pressure of the investor lobby on our political representatives and public administration is so strong, that the decisive state organs and institutions buckle under it.  Individuals who make decisions at  various levels about the dispute between the forest and golf course construction are not even protected by the prestige of their position, nor by their office or institution. 

 

The investor pressure is carried out at a personal level.  Numerous politicians and senior public servants already play golf and are unable or do not wish to speak out against the sport, even though the construction of the course would mean the partial felling of the forest.

 

That is how the seemingly absurd possibility that the state and the Prague City Council may not defend its own property – a forest, according to the legislation of the Czech Republic, deserving of the highest protection – has become an alarming reality.

 

Even though the City of Prague has developed a number of draft documents on the environment, in which the protection of forests is firmly established, in the case of Klánovice Forest these materials are deliberately ignored…

 

The investor through its hired experts has thus gained scope to argue that the clearing of a part of the protected forest and the development of the golf course is in fact its greatest protection!  This is quite absurd and inexcusable from our political representatives!

 

This attitude touches not only the forest, but the nature of our society as well.  The Czech Republic is becoming a golfing superpower, but at what cost…!

 

Lets’ defend our rights and protect both the forest and ourselves as well!