Agriculture and land management

The company Opavská lesní manages and owns almost 800 hectares of land, which it manages by its own means, through suppliers or leasers. According to the Land Register, the majority of this is forest but a third if agricultural land.

The agricultural land is used for production. The majority is grassland and hay meadows used for animal feed and pasture for cattle. The pasture is home to light weight cattle of the Highland breed, which has adapted to year-round grazing and so has minimal care demands. Their grazing maintains the species-rich plant communities of the Moravice River valley meadows do not suffer degradation of habitat.

Our arable land produces feed for the game of the Jelenice Game Reserve, the Albertovec pheasantry and nearby hunting areas. This enables us to be self-sufficient.

A small part of the agricultural land is used for the production of forest tree seedlings. This has helped us expand the production area of the forest nursery in Hradec nad Moravicí.

Areas which are less accessible, unfruitful on inappropriate for agricultural production are gradually afforested meaning there are few non-maintained areas which can be bad for nature.

The parts of meadows that are largely inaccessible by heavy machinery are leased to the NIVA Land Association. They undertake manual mowing of these areas so preventing the spread of invasive plants (e.g., hogweed, rhododendron) while preserving the habitat for rare and endangered species of plants and animals – such as spring snowflakes, alpine newt, smooth newt, etc.

One result of the cooperation between Opavska lesní a.s. and the NIVA Land Association is a restoration the watercourse and mill races at the Rozsocháčský Mill. This now provides another suitable environment for nature and reproduction opportunities for plants and animals which depend on the watercourse. Indeed, four television documentaries named Nature and Natura 2000 have already been produced following our joint progress. These have been distributed to schools within the Moravian-Silesian Region and are used to teach pupils.