Standing beneath a seemingly Biblical downpour on a grey, dusky evening in the Czech mountains, it could be hard to see what reason a person would have to smile and laugh. Yet on the evening of Friday 19th August, thirty hardy young climate activists from nine countries showed nothing but joy as their clothes soaked through in a special three-hectare paddock for a wolfpack in Srní, Šumava National Park. Holding the wolves in quasi-captivity at an educational centre for locals, the paddock aims to give the public reassuring insight into the behaviour and appearance of these carnivores, which have been returning to the area in the last few years after historic extirpation. The group that visited that night, or at least most of them, did not catch a glimpse, however: the pounding rain meant that those who managed to keep their eyes open for more than a second saw only swirling mist and the formless blobs of colleagues just metres away.

A torrential downpour met the 30 Game On! Young Climate Ambassadors who ventured to Srní in search of wolves. Can’t see? Neither could we! Photo: Elliott Cocker.

How were there such high spirits amid this apparent disappointment? The secret – this was the last night of the Game On! International Wilderness Camp held at Šumava, the second international Game On! camp of the year.  and the largest to date. The 40+ Game On! Young Climate Ambassadors aged 16-30 gathered from Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia; by Friday, they had completed a week-long array of volunteer work, educational hikes, and special lectures with regional experts, forging quite the community in the process.  After the time spent supporting each other through intense days in the field, completing environmental restoration projects, and sharing insights about ecology, climate, and politics, a night spent together beneath a storm was, well, like water off a duck’s back.

Getting our hands dirty

A muddy high-five after some tough work in the mires. Photo: Patrik Gažo.

While the Young Climate Ambassadors attending the camp were not entirely sure what to expect upon their arrival, it immediately became clear that there was a common goal running through the week in beautiful Šumava: to put possibly our most valuable resource – our labour – to work in its ecological restoration projects. Šumava is the Czech Republic’s youngest National Park, having been established in 1991, and is still in the process of re-establishing ecological processes that were historically inhibited by human intervention for agriculture, resource extraction, and recreation. This extensive work often requires extra pairs of hands and the Game On! Young Ambassador team at this camp were a willing workforce.

Perhaps most significant in Šumava’s restoration work has been the effort to reverse the historical drainage of peatlands. Peat is an organic material formed by the slow, partial decomposition of plant matter in waterlogged conditions. Peatlands are entire areas characterised by the formation of this material and its associated ecosystems. While the ecological and climatic value of peatlands is now being recognised – globally peatlands store more carbon than the world’s forests for instance – historically the peatlands of Šumava were viewed as obstacles to agricultural production, so efforts were made to lower the water table and make the land suitable for growing crops. A study by Ivana Bufkova (who delivered a lecture at the camp)  and colleagues found that as much as 70% of Šumava’s peatlands had been at least influenced by drainage, typically done by digging canals to transport water quickly away from the landscape. Drained peat degrades as it dries, emitting carbon, and leading to significant changes in vegetation, often to the detriment of biodiversity.

Carrying wooden planks through the meadows, used in the construction of dams. Photo: Patrik Gažo.

The task, then, for the eager group who had gathered for the camp: undo the engineering of the landscape to take water away, and instead encourage water retention, enabling peat formation to resume. If this sounds like a technical ecological task, the practice for campers was rather more simple. Where the landscape had been altered to whisk water away, it had to be dammed; where a channel was dug to transport water, it had to be filled in. One of the most memorable days in the field, therefore, involved digging into a 20th-century channel built to drain a meadow, hammering a series of interlocking posts into the ground to block the channel, and securing them with nails. Perhaps a swinging sledgehammer is not the typical image of the environmentalist, but in this case, some of the frustrations built up over years of climate campaigning were certainly pounded out into the posts that composed the dams.

Another day involved heading into a drained bog forest, and filling in a drainage channel with wood debris, again to encourage the waterlogging of the terrain. This physically taxing work was buoyed throughout by insightful conversations about the local ecology, jokes zipping between participants and a palpable broader atmosphere of collaboration.

Hammering a new dam into an overgrown drainage channel, to retain water and restart peat formation. Petar, from Bulgaria (left), and Weam, from Germany (right), were efficient, but it could take up to a whole working day to install one dam. Photo: Patrik Gažo.

In the drained meadows, it was not nearly as wet and muddy as it could have been. Hot, clear conditions all week made working in the field easier underfoot, but the sun took its toll through a smattering of sunstroke cases in those putting in the work through the day. Some more than others, then, were feeling deeply the effects of an unprecedented dry season in the region, which had brought into focus the urgent need for peatland restoration to promote water retention and improve the resilience of the landscape to drought. Much of the laughter on that torrential final night in Srní therefore, which would have probably looked crazy to onlookers, was fuelled by satisfaction in imagining the work we had completed come to life through rainfall, as the infilled channels spilt over and the floodplains inundated. And many had come to enjoy the prospect of wet mud: as Markus, a 31-year-old ambassador from Germany, put it, “definitely, digging in the mud was a highlight of the camp! Because this was something you did last when you were a child.’

A truly special environment

The multi-layered growth of Šumava’s impressive glacial relict bog forests (right), and alpine spruce forests (left). Dwarf birch (Betula nana) can be seen flourishing in the bog forest while decaying matter in the spruce forest gives way to an impressive undergrowth of ferns, mosses and fungi. Photos: Elliott Cocker (right), Patrik Gažo (left).

Despite the significant restoration work going on in Šumava, it would be wrong to paint an image of the National Park as one of degradation, rather than existing ecological marvels. One of the jewels of Europe, a highlight of the camp was the opportunity to hike through its unique environments, led by the inspired, intimate knowledge of guide Lukáš Linhart. Beginning with some of the drained meadows which we later worked on damming, Lukáš guided us to some of the best-preserved areas of the National Park, including some gems of its glacial relict biotopes. A simply unforgettable moment was his exclamation “Let’s go to Scandinavia!”, as we entered jade-coloured scrub, dense up to knee-height, and punctuated by occasional taller trunks of spruce and birch. A veritable feast for the eyes, glacial species rarely found elsewhere in this region including dwarf birch (Betula nana), and quillworts (genus Isoetes) beneath the surface of postglacial lakes, were mainstays of this landscape, which through elevation and bog conditions sustained much of its ecology from the last Ice Age.

Guide Lukáš Linhart describes conservation measures for biodiversity in the Vltava river (pictured), including the important freshwater pearl mussel, which purifies the water, and enables other species to flourish. Lukáš later encouraged us to drink from the river, a rare experience in Europe. Photo: Patrik Gažo.

Trekking into the impressive mountain spruce forests more typical of the regional climate, a common topic of discussion was also the impact of red and roe deer, with their inflated numbers owing to the lack of predators in the region until recent years. While recent efforts have led to the establishment of two wolfpacks in Šumava as well as over 100 lynx, rangers and hunters have actively hunted the deer to attempt to suppress their numbers. Ranger Kitka, who guided a hike, explained that without this, deer consume the undergrowth of the forest without limit, preventing the forest from reproducing itself. The more sustainable and ecologically sound solution of restoring the population of large carnivores to restore balance to forest processes has been practically difficult, resource-intensive and politically tricky, which highlighted the larger-scale obstacles to restoring and protecting the landscape. In particular, public concern surrounding wolf attacks on livestock, and inflated perceptions of the threat to humans, have made politicians historically reluctant to show support for reintroduction and conservation measures. This is despite the extremely low risks of conflicts with proper preparation measures (it may be cliché, but wolves would generally be more scared of you than you are of them) and state compensation available for livestock losses. Nonetheless, the benefits of successful efforts by both carnivores and hunters to address the deer population were clear; where some areas of forest had been stripped of almost all greenery beneath the treeline, areas with a lesser intensity of deer foraging were rich with ferns, saplings, and flowering plants, evidence of the next generation of forest sprouting below.

The obstacles posed by the lack of large carnivores, and the wide-ranging efforts required to reintroduce them to Šumava, were a reminder to all at the camp: while we could produce meaningful outcomes by getting our hands dirty, there were also issues of politics, logistics, and funding at stake in many conservation issues. This is well-known to all with knowledge about Šumava’s history. The ‘outbreak’ of bark beetles in the Park’s forests in the mid-2000s became a major topic of Czech culture and politics, with politicians vowing to be ‘tough’ by clear-cutting affected areas to supposedly halt the outbreak, while many conservationists supported the prospect of non-intervention and natural regeneration. To date, this issue still divides the park, as the areas under the jurisdiction of the Czech State Forest clear-cut trees affected by the beetle, while the National Park largely opts to leave the trees in place. As a second-night lecture from Jaroslav Červenka insisted (informed by his published research), disturbances to the forest like bark beetle outbreaks are natural processes, which in fact promote biodiversity by creating a diversity of habitats and opportunities for other species to establish: a telling indication of the contestation of conservation on a political plane, visible in the landscape itself. The surrounding hills wherever we sat were dotted by patches of light-brown trees, left standing despite affliction by bark beetles, while other patches were completely bare of trees after clear cuts. After spending time doing the practical groundwork of conservation in the field, the message was brought home that our efforts on an intellectual and political level must continue, to resist ecological decline, and promote the best ecological practices backed by research. Doing so is no doubt integral to the battle against dangerous climate change.

Young ambassadors absorb the intimate local knowledge of our experienced guides. Having worked through many bark beetle outbreaks, our guides were eager to point out the visible ecological recovery that followed non-intervention rather than clear-cutting as a management response. Photo: Patrik Gažo.

With such a fast-paced itinerary, the week in Šumava flew by, but not before a real, lasting community had been formed, and lifelong lessons learned. The generation that will create the change to reverse ecological decline and avert dangerous climate change was on proud display at Šumava, and the week certainly felt like a celebration of that.

Despite the intensity of the week, it was all smiles in the final night’s group photo, showing no signs of wear and tear. Though Šumava had one last treat in store with the relentless storm delivered later that night. Photo: Patrik Gažo.