Čihanské slatě reserve in Czechia: rare wild mineral springs

A new nature reserve, Čihanské slatě, has been created in the Slavkov Forest — the 36th small protected area in this protected landscape. Its main value lies in wild mineral springs and the life they support, which can hardly be found anywhere else in Central Europe, the Nature Conservation Agency of the Czech Republic reports.

Springs untouched by humans

Here visitors can see what mineral springs would look like if people had not used them for their own needs: no wells built into hollow tree trunks, no water drawn for spas. In the past these springs were also once tapped in hand-dug pits, but over the last century nature has almost completely concealed the traces of such interventions.

“Unusual single-celled algae grow in the pools of iron-rich springs, among them the very rare diatom Pinnularia ferrophila, which until recently was known in only a few places in the world,” explains Přemysl Tájek of the agency. The surrounding peat meadows are home to other rare species: among the plants, bogbean, flea sedge and marsh grass-of-Parnassus, and among the birds, the great snipe, which nests here.

Peat as a 13,000-year archive

The peat bog itself is valuable too: the peat layer reaches eight metres in places. Pollen and preserved plant remains and algae shells make it possible to study the development of the local vegetation and the entire surrounding landscape going back 13,000 years.

What lies ahead for the meadows

On the most valuable stretches of waterlogged meadow, the protected landscape administration has been tending the land since 2010, mowing it by hand every year. In future, other areas of wet meadow will be mown as well to increase species diversity, which will also benefit the rare plants. There are also plans to remove shrubby willows from the iron-rich pools in order to restore the characteristic vegetation of peat springs.

“The new reserve has become the 36th small specially protected area in the Slavkov Forest. It would not have been possible without the goodwill of enlightened owners, and we would like to thank the management of the company “Léčebné lázně Mariánské Lázně”, as well as the council and city assembly of Mariánské Lázně, at least in this way. It is a gift for the current Year of Protected Landscape Areas, which the Czech UNESCO Commission has also taken under its patronage,” adds the agency’s director František Pelc.

The area has long been shaped by natural forces combined with human support, like most of the Slavkov Forest.

Around Prague, based on reporting by ekolist.cz