Enough is enough… Can various legislative tools cause ambiguities when applied in a single area? (Case study: Hády Hill, Brno, Czech Republic)

Establishing legal protection to a geosite (or geodiversity site) is considered one of the key tools of how to conserve its values and how to avoid degradation and devastation. The proper management measures (usually included in care plans or other planning and strategic documentation) then help to balance the conservation needs and sustainable use of the sites and allow to gain public finances for these purposes.

In the Czech Republic, nature conservation is anchored in Act n. 114/1992 Coll. (Nature Conservation Act) which defines several levels of protected areas that can be applied also on geoheritage. However, there are other legislative tools that protect other entities (e.g. agricultural land, water, or forests). The special relationship to geodiversity has Act n. 44/1988 Coll. (Mining Act) which aims to protect the mineral deposits including their deposit areas. Various tools for the protection applied to a single area can cause ambiguities because every protected entity has different management and limitations.

This is the case of Hády Hill, an area situated in the outskirts of Brno, the second-largest city in the Czech Republic. The area is important from the Earth Science point of view (tectonics, paleontology, geomorphology, stratigraphy, hydrogeology) and has high ecological and cultural values, e.g. occurrence of endangered species linked to the subsoil, remnants of old landscape structures (orchards, pastures), historical mining, use of the building material for Brno monuments. Earth-science and ecological values are protected according to Nature Conservation Act within one National Nature Reserve, two Nature Monuments, and four Important Landscape Elements and partly included in Special Area of Conservation (according to the Habitats Directive - Council Directive 92/43/EEC). Moreover, due to the occurrence of quality limestone, which was extracted from the Middle Ages up to the end of the 20^th Century, the part of the study area is declared as a reserved mineral deposit and protected deposit area (according to Mining Act). All these areas mutually overlap.

Concerning geoheritage, some phenomena still have no degree of protection, but they are included in the Database of Geological Localities (kept by the Czech Geological Survey) and proposed for legal protection.

Last but not least, the site undergoes tourist and recreational pressure which is continuously increasing due to the COVID-19 situation (lack of indoor possibilities of how to spend the free time).

To find the balance between the various conservation needs, management measures, limitations, tourist/recreation pressure, and urban development, it was necessary to do a complex analysis of the various types of protected areas and their values. Based on the SWOT analysis and Risk Assessment, the main threats, risks, and possible conflicts of interest were identified and assessed. Then, specific proposals and possible solutions were designed with an emphasis on effective geoconservation (e.g. declaration of the new or enlarging the currently protected areas), development of sustainable forms of tourism, and future rational use of an area (e.g. via volunteer activities or participative planning of management).