Scholarly record

HISTORIC MANOR PARKS ARE BIDIVERSITY HOT-SPOTS IN EUROPEAN CULTURAL LANDSCAPES

Ivo Machar

Abstract

In Europe, historic manor parks have been established as important parts of manor houses of aristocracy. Currently, most of manor parks and historical gardens are considered as very interesting historic monuments as well as important aesthetic features of cultural landscapes. Recently, historic manor parks come to the focus of ecologists and conservationists because of its biodiversity. Large historic parks and gardens, especially those with presence of old very large trees, providing habitats for many species of endangered plants and animals. In this paper, we present some results of the field research on bird community in four historic manor parks in the Czech Republic. Bird census using method of line transects was provided in 2022–2023. Results revealed that bird communities in historic urban parks were very rich in abundance and species richness. Results supported idea that large historic parks can be considered as important hot-spots for bird diversity in cultural landscapes. Urban and territory planning as well as plans for maintaining historical parks should seriously take into account the important ecological role of historic parks, joining conservation both historic and natural heritage.

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