Volunteers from around Europe restoring wetland in Šumava National Park
In the week from 17 to 24 August 2024, more than 30 young volunteers from five European countries will participate in an international camp focused on wetland restoration in Šumava National Park. The event is organised jointly with the Šumava National Park Administration and the Na Mysli organisation. I interviewed its director, Viktorie Tenzerová, to find out the organization’s motivations and impact of the camp.
“The motivation for our team, as organizers, is to provide some knowledge and skills to youth from the terrain, but also to help restore nature from man-made input from the past. So, it helps to fight climate change and to adapt much better. We also want to create an international environment, especially at the Czech-German border.
“When it comes to the motivation of the participants, I can only anticipate from the previous camps that they have always been enthusiastic about the chance of meeting other youth, exchanging their knowledge, but also seeing in practice how the theoretical material can really help.”
What specific activities will the volunteers be doing to restore the Park?
“In fact, they will be working on a rehabilitation of the forest and in the pit lands on the mires because these have been artificially ameliorated. So, they are now restoring and bringing water back into the landscape, so they will be sculpting and modeling new streams and distributing some materials for the construction of the wooden dams that will help hold the water in the pit lands.”
Does that take specific expertise or can anyone just participate?
“Anyone is welcome. It is not manually difficult work, so really anyone can join. During the camp, there will always be three days of volunteering work. They will be working one day and one day they will have lectures to see what the nature should look like by walking in protected areas of the national park, or they will have workshops on the fauna and flora of the park. So, we do not expect that it will be heavy work but it really is something that anyone can join and support.”
Lastly, can you share more about Na Mysli’s role and its connection to the European Climate Pact?
“Na Mysli is a Czech coordinator of the European Climate Pact. We have three ambassadors of the Pact that will be joining this camp. And we are deeply involved in communicating and raising awareness of climate change in Czechia, not just for the youth but also for the general public. We are working in schools, but mainly we are trying to use the communication of the European Union and climate pact to share the general knowledge of the importance of our actions, either as normal civilians but active citizens as well that we need to do to mitigate and adapt to climate change.”
