Právní úprava ochrany přírody a krajiny v České republice

The current legal regulation of the nature and landscape protection is represented particularly by the constituent act in this area of environmental law namely the Act of the Czech National Council No. 114/1992 C.L. as subsequently amended. The legal regulation is based on a systematic general protection of all nature and landscape as well as the special protection of certain parts of nature; these are dealt with in the introductory passage of the article. The general protection is effected through six fundamental instruments which are the territorial systems of ecological stability, significant elements of landscape, the general protection of the genetic fund, the protection of wood species growing outside the forest, the protection of inorganic nature and the protection of the landscape character. Special protection of nature is subdivided into territorial protection and that of species. The former relates to particularly valuable habitats or areas which are proclaimed specially protected areas of one of the categories laid down by law. The respective categories of specially protected areas differs as to the standard of protected values as well as the average size of the area. This is met by the strictness of the protection scheme as well as the form of proclaiming. The species’ protection is based on a special, stricter regime of treating selected, specially protected, species of plants and animals. The criterion for providing protection for an individual plant or animal species by proclaiming it specially protected species rests in the face of being rare or endangered or scientifically significant. The core of this article is formed by its third and fourth parts which analyze the topical issues of legal regulation and submit for discussion proposals for systematic amendments to the legal regulation of the nature and landscape protection. The same third and fourth parts of the article deal in particular with the following: the issue of the formation and competence of organs of state administration in charge of protection of nature and the landscape; the legal status of the nature guard; the delimitation of the exercise of state control in the protective zones of specially protected areas; the participation of legal entities in the process of the nature conservation; liability for delicts; the regulation of the protective conditions of specially protected areas; the restriction of movement in specially protected areas; the plans for care provided for specially protected areas in relation to specific protective conditions applied to them; the issues of property relations. The proposals for amendments affecting the system include in particular the issues of extending the economic instruments of the protection of nature and the landscape, the preparation of new laws regulating the legal status of the existing national parks, the change in the protection scheme for the paleontological findings as well as the adoption of the legal regulation on the state benefits provided for the owners in case of harm caused to their property by the specially protected species of wild animals. In its final part the article mentions the attained level of approximation of the Czech legal regulation of the nature and landscape protection to the European Union law. In relation to EU law, the principal issues lacking legal solution include the absence of the criminal law consequences to the Act No. 16/1997 C.L. which provides for a detailed regulation of the international trade with endangered species, particularly with wild animals and wild plants; the so far non-existent legal regulation of the genetically modified organisms as well as the issue of guarantees for the covenants binding the Czech Republic as a result of its accession to the Bern Convention on the conservation of the European fauna and flora and its natural habitats.