As part of the LIFE Endemic Panalp project, we are successfully continuing the restoration of flowering meadows and traditional pastures. Most recently, thanks to the project, after many decades, farm animals are grazing again in the saddle below Chmeľová, which is the second highest peak of the White Carpathians. It is interesting that a very frequent tourist route and the educational trail around Vršatec pass through the saddle. In order to preserve the free movement of visitors and at the same time prevent animals from escaping, we have placed special steel staircases at the crossings of the fence with tourist routes. At the same time, we installed boards informing about the importance of grazing and how to behave in the pasture. We know similar ways of harmonizing management with tourism from the Alps, and we believe that they will take root in our country as well.
We restored the traditional pasture under Chmeľová in cooperation with a local young farmer, who thanks to this gained access to long-term uncultivated agricultural land. It concerns five hectares of overgrown meadows, on which a small herd of sheep grazes from September, which will gradually expand. We are already cooperating with the same farmer in the area of European importance Hrehorkové in nearby Mikušovce, and we are happy that our projects help not only nature, but also local residents.
The meadows in the saddle behind the Vršatské bradlá were much larger in the past than they are today. They paid the price for lack of interest in managing such hard-to-reach plots of land. The renewal of grazing in the Chmeľová saddle will benefit, for example, the population of the clouded apollo butterfly. It also requires open forest edges for its life. Its caterpillars feed on Corydalis plants growing in the adjacent forests, but during warm spring days they sunbathe in the meadows. And after all, adult females also need free space to fly through the forests. For this reason, in the next few years, we will gradually expand and open the remaining meadows sensitively towards forest stands. In addition to the clouded apollos, in the summer months you can also meet even more endangered mountain apollo butterflies in the saddle, which sometimes fly here from the nearby rock cliffs for the nectar of flowering herbs. However, they are the ones that suffer a lot from the neglect of management in the locality, because they are being pushed out by expansive grasses, nettles and encroaching trees. And the best recipe for suppressing them is grazing animals.
Saddle of Chmeľová hill is not the first locality within the SCI Vršatské bradlá, where we have managed to return thanks to funds from the LIFE scheme. We have been successfully grazing here for several years in cooperation with local landowners’ association, on approximately six hectares of south-eastern slopes directly under the cliffs. As part of the ongoing “PANALP” project, we are also expanding the meadows, which are one of the few locations in the world where the endemic Tephroseris longifolia moravica. After the flowering of this rare plant, a herd of cows from an agricultural cooperative in nearby Pruské village graze these meadows.
