UO forest – more than just a wood production

It has been a while since the University of Ostrava academic and student’s volunteers finished the planting of more than 5,000 trees at Javorový vrch by Třinec. Why have they done so and what is the purpose of that? We have the answer not only from the Dean of the Faculty of Science, Jan Hradecký.

Originally, the volunteers were supposed to plant 11,500 trees, however, because of the difficult terrain they were able to plant only half of them. The university has promised to plant the rest of the trees as soon as the weather and the situation allow to. “I really appreciate the work that the students of the University of Ostrava have done. The quality was close to that of the experienced planters and they handled the rocky slope bravely,” said a nature protection specialist from the regional Forests of the Czech Republic (Lesy ČR), Václav Langer.

Influence not only your future

That is the motto of the UO campaign thanks to which the UO forest has been created. There is also a hidden message in that slogan. When the University of Ostrava was creating the campaign about a year ago for the following two years, it wanted to motivate the students to realise that their choice, whether it is a field of study or a university, will affect only their future but also the future of something beyond us. Let it be the region or the whole planet. It may sound like a cliché but now we live in a time that intensively proves how big importance the science and education have for the whole society. At the moments when everything does not go according to the plan, there is the science to got our back and to come up with another plan.

I plant, you plant, we plant. Does it make sense when many other organizations do plant as well?

A question has appeared in the social media whether it makes sense to cooperate with the Forests of the Czech Republic (Lesy ČR) when they are supposed to plant trees even without our support. Therefore, we have asked the Dean of the Faculty of Science, Jan Hradecký, who took an active part in the planting. “I think there are no boundaries to any activity. It is important to realise that the Forests of the Czech Republic (Lesy ČR) are a state company and they take care of state forests, therefore, of the forests that belong to the state. Of course, we can certainly see a number of glitches in the activities of this state-owned company but the forest ecosystems are not the ones to blame. Therefore, the UO initiative seems fine and right to me. We try to influence the future of our forests and even because of that, the UO said that it does not want to plant another spruce monoculture but to choose a more nature close species composition of the forest. The university can plant at its own land immediately. On the lands of a city, it can lead an initiative and ask the particular unions and maybe help but I think that the city has got companies to do this. If trees are planted in the cities, they must meet more criteria and their planting has to be professional.”

You can watch the video below to see what the atmosphere was like during the event.

Updated: 14. 02. 2022