Unexpected narratives in conservation: Discourses of identity and place in Šumava National Park, Czech Republic

Abstract

In Šumava National Park, dominant actors dispute appropriate conservation strategies habitually overlooking Šumava's residents and their socioeconomic concerns. Routinely disregarded, Šumava's residents invoke narratives of identity and place that undermine the conservation paradigm by constructing the local population ‘quality’ as insufficient to make conservation a success. This paper examines the circumstances in which such a discourse emerges, how it responds to the asperity of conservation in a post-socialist setting and gains credence for implausible conclusions by appealing to broadly recognised Czech and European narratives of identity and place. What emerges is a discursive fragmentation of the subject simultaneously lends the discourse credibility and frustrates the redistribution of power in the area.

The author would like to thank Juanita Sundberg, Merje Kuus, Joanna Long and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper. She is also indebted to Stewart Thompson, and Kun Zoltan and Christopher Hogan at the WWF PAN Parks Program, for providing the academic and financial support for the thesis research upon which this paper is based. The supportive efforts of many at the Šumava National Park Authority and the Hnuti Duha, and Magdalena Jonesova during the fieldwork for this project are also much appreciated.

Notes

1. There are 7000 permanent residents within the NP (Valenta, 1996, p. 36) and 24 000 within the larger biosphere reserve (Landa, 1989, p. 15).

2. The ‘wider action context’ refers to the network of political scales above the site of interaction.

3. Charter 77 was a prominent dissident group. Vaclav Havel, who would later become president of the Czech Republic in the 1990s, was one of its founding members.

4. ‘Sudetendeutsche’ translates into Sudeten Germans. Sudetenland refers to the border regions of the Czech portion of Czechoslovakia.

5. Following World War II, the primary actors of the international community were Russia, the UK and the US.

6. Decree 502/1965 instituted the planned transfer of Slovak Roma to the Czech portion of the territory. It was also aimed at dispersal with a maximum of a 5 per cent Roma population per town (Guy, 2001, p. 291)

7. This list is not exhaustive.

8. In 1998, the total number of employees in the Šumava NPA was 385, of whom 262 were in the department of the forest service, 68 in the Department of Environment Protection and 55 in common departments (Hnuti Duha, 2000).

9. Typically NPs are divided into two or three zones. A PA's first (or core) zone is usually a strictly non-intervention area, where only research is allowed. Second-zones are meant to buffer the first-zones: intervention is allowed insofar as it promotes the desired ecological processes in the first-zone. Third-zones are for habitation. The IUCN ideal for an NP like Šumava is one large cohesive first-zone, surrounded by a second-zone with third-zones reserved for communities and their immediate environs. Since 1995, Šumava NP has had 135 small and disjointed first-zones.

10. Such funds are important for a variety of functions and activities such as research, educational and tourist facilities and staff salaries.

11. Currently, core-zones are fragmented into 135 pieces covering 13 per cent of the NP area. Many, including several mid-level managers at the NPA, see this consolidation goal as impractical and rooted in the IUCN criteria for Category II Protected Areas (a designation granted to Šumava NP in 1991), which stipulates a unified core-zone over 75 per cent of the area. Even the most radical ENGO—the Hnuiti Duha—sees this 75 per cent target as excessive given Šumava NP's large size and the need for communities both to occupy space and to earn a living in the park.

12. This is the largest of the restitution claims. The next is 1000 ha by Volary.

13. In a study by Bartos et al. (1998, p. 389), the ‘socio-demographic structure of [the] local population’ was the second most frequently mentioned obstacle to the territory's socioeconomic advancement with a frequency of nearly 25 per cent, following a lack of financial resources.

14. A bridge over Lipno Lake and a ski area at Šmicina are examples.

15. See note 13.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kathryn Furlong

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