Description
The land trusts are an effective tool of voluntary nature conservation, time-proven in many countries. Their added value compared to "conventional" methods of nature conservation are close cooperation with landowners and legal relations to properties. The land trust movement in Czech republic has developed since the mid 1990s, now they are about 60 NGOs involved in it. Many of them, however, work on a volunteer basis. For their development and efficiency is necessary many of specialized information (legal, economic, biological etc.). This knowledge must be permanently updated, eg. in the field of law, which now has been a lot of changes.The aim of this project is to increase land trusts´ professional knowledge and skills, thereby the efficiency of the care of natural heritage, as well as the involvement of local communities and owners in this care. The role of partner organization from Norway is especially in mutual exchanging knowlege and information and methodological consultation.
Summary of project results
The land trusts´ work is very demanding from the proffesional point of view, although it´s executed by volunteers. It concerns law, biology and sociology. That is why the main target of the project was to ensure the education for the land trusts in all fields of their work with emhasis on the law issues. Integral part of the project was formed by the exchange of experience with the Norwegian partner. The targets of the project was reached. Law analysis of two possible land trusts´ working tools was realised and anchored in agreements (e.g. the agreement concerning easements), more than thirty methodical sheets were created and other materials for the creation of the next ones were gathered). A workshop for the land trusts took place, the study journey to Norway and the journey of the Norwegian experts in the CR came true, at the same time the land trusts were being provided with help, whatever they needed. For the land trusts the methodical sheets mean crucial shift in informations´ availability, especially in the law issues. The outputs of the project are, in our opinion, important for the whole society. We hope that the cooperation with the Norwegian organisation Naturvernforbundet i Buskerud will continue - the oportunities for next projects were already mentioned. The project helped to improve the professional level of the land trusts and the materials, that were created, will be useful not only for the existing land trusts but also for those which are going to be founded.
Summary of bilateral results
Two six-day meetings with our Norwegian colleagues (one of them took place in Norway and the second one in the Czech Republic) have brought us a lot of interesting findings and experience among which the most important ones are: connection of the nature protection with the development of tourism, local products´ processing, solution to the conflict between "preservative" and "active" way of nature conservation, that exists in our country as well. Different views on some issues were shown to us (e. g. species´ protection (e. g. juniper) or the question concerning the recovery of the biotopes damaged during the construction of roads). Our Norwegian partners have found their visit to the Czech Republic useful too as the way the Czech land trusts work (a nonprofit organisation takes care of valuable natural habitats based on possession or leasing without a direct state influence) is not known in Norway. They felt inspired and expressed the will to apply something similar in their country. Our land trusts appreciated the feedback they got from our Norwegian colleagues. We consider this exchange of experience with similar organisations abroad very important because it can help to find solutions to the problems, both sides may be inspired by each other, etc. Our cooperation with the Norwegian partner was an interesting and useful enrichment of this project.