Protected landscape area (PLA) is a category designed to protect larger sites or whole geographic areas with harmonious landscape, characteristic relief and a major share of natural or semi-natural ecosystems. Such landscapes often contain preserved monuments of historic settlements, which considerably enhance the area’s aesthetic value. The economic management of such areas follows the different levels of protective zoning so as to conserve and improve the zones’ natural state and to conserve and create optimal ecological functions of these areas. Each area has its own administrative authority.

Pálava Protected Landscape Area

The Pálava Protected Landscape Area (www.palava.cz) was designated in 1976 (Decree No. 5790/1976 of the Ministry of Culture) and it is situated in a landscape subject to intensive farming. Its total area of 83 km2 makes it one of the smallest protected landscape areas in the country. Its plant and animal species composition is diverse. The natural conditions of the area facilitated the occurrence of many plant species which cannot be found anywhere else in the Czech Republic. You can find dry grasslands, psammophilous vegetation, thermophilous oak forests, loess oak forests with undergrowth of rich species diversity or Pannonian oak-hornbeam forests. In the alluvium of the Dyje river, below the limestone cliffs of the Pálava Hills, hardwood alluvial forests of pedunculate oak and narrow-leafed ash are preserved alongside remnants of floodplain meadows. In the southern part of the PLA, on the banks of the Nesyt fishpond remnants of halophytic vegetation are preserved. In the Pálava PLA there are four national nature reserves, one national nature monument, five nature reserves and four nature monuments.