The Bílé Karpaty Protected Landscape Area extends along the border of Slovácko and Wallachia and was declared in 1980.
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The Bílé Karpaty Protected Landscape Area covers the White Carpathians mountain range, which stretches from Slovácko to Wallachia along the Moravian-Slovak border. The area lies at an altitude of 170 to 970 metres above sea level. The territory is managed by the Nature Conservation Agency of the Czech Republic through the Bílé Karpaty PLA Administration.[2]
Declaration and protection
The protected landscape area was declared on 3 November 1980 and took effect on 18 February 1981.[2] The territory contains 52 small-scale specially protected areas. They include five national nature reserves, one national nature monument, sixteen nature reserves and thirty nature monuments.[2] The Natura 2000 network also extends into the PLA, specifically seventeen sites of Community importance.[2]
A landscape shaped by people
According to the Bílé Karpaty PLA Administration, people and their economic activity are an integral part of the local landscape and nature. For millennia human activity has taken part in shaping the landscape and is a condition for preserving its values even today.[1] Valuable natural and natural-cultural assets are, according to the administration, found not only in the open countryside but also in human settlements and their surroundings.[1]
The administration explains the uniqueness of the White Carpathian meadows by the fact that, unlike in most other foothill areas, continuity has been preserved here between the treeless landscape of the early postglacial period and the secondary treeless landscape that arose after the arrival of humans. As a result, according to the administration, many species of the ancient treeless landscape survived here, which elsewhere disappeared with the spread of shady forest and, because of their limited ability to disperse, never returned.[1]
The administration further states that historical circumstances paradoxically also contributed to the preservation of natural values on an unprecedented scale, namely destructive invasions from the south-east shortly before the Industrial Revolution and the area's remoteness from the centres of power in the socialist period.[1] According to the administration, repeated destructive military campaigns are also the reason why not many historical monuments in good condition have survived in the area.[1] The location in a remote borderland, on the other hand, according to the administration, allowed a calm development of culture that was little influenced from outside, and the preservation of a landscape sensitively cultivated by people.[1] The second half of the 20th century brought, according to the administration, a fundamental turning point, when planned agricultural management was introduced and the gradual development of the landscape and of people's relationship to it was replaced by an abrupt change.[1]
Folk culture and ethnographic regions
The PLA administration states that a rich folk culture, based on folk traditions and folklore, is still maintained in the White Carpathians. According to the administration, several ethnographic regions with their own distinctive features meet in the area, namely Dolňácko, Horňácko, Moravské Kopanice, Luhačovické Zálesí and Southern Wallachia.[1] The diversity of White Carpathian nature is, according to the administration, mirrored also in the diversity of folk songs, costumes and ornaments, as well as in the variety of fruit tree cultivars.[1] The administration also adds that manifestations of traditional folk culture are today limited mainly to holidays, celebrations and festivals.[1]
Characterisation according to the area's administration
The Bílé Karpaty PLA Administration describes the area as "orchid mountains stretching from Slovácko to Wallachia", which are, in its words, "as colourful in folk traditions and folklore as in their unrepeatable natural scenery and rare species of plants and animals".[2]