Agriculture ministry nods to exchange of state and church forest land

The Ministry of Agriculture has agreed to allow the state owned company Lesy ČR  to exchange several thousand hectares of state forest land with that restituted to the Catholic Church. According to the Prague Archbishopric, this will allow the Church to consolidate fragmented parish forests into larger units so as to enable better management. The Prague Archbishopric had been pushing for the agreement for years, but the previous governments of ANO and the Social Democrats opposed the exchange since they were against the restitution of land to the Church as such.