Grazing as a management tool of permanent grasslands in protected landscape areas

 Karel Tajovský, Václav Pižl, Josef Starý, Jiří Schlaghamerský, Petr Kment, Igor Malenovský, Květoslav Resl, František Chládek

The results of the research on soil and aboveground invertebrates showed that the grazing management in grasslands do not represent unambiguously negative factor resulting in impoverishment and degradation of given biotopes. Intensive grazing can differently decrease densities of some species of oribatid mites, earthworms, millipedes, terrestrial isopods and other representatives of soil fauna as well as some insect groups related to aboveground vegetation. Intensive pasture eliminates above all the species specifically connected with structural microhabitats on soil surface of non-grazed grasslands; simultaneously it supports spreading of non specific euryvalent invertebrates and can enrich the soil and insect fauna by the species inhabiting the excrements of large herbivores. Less intense grazing and combination of both, mowing and grazing managements result in diversification of habitat conditions in grasslands and contribute to the maintenance of species diversity of soil invertebrate and insect communities, and support thus to conserve natural conditions of the given localities of nature protection importance. The results showed, that both extreme variants of management, i.e. the intense grazing and mowing of large areas, and also abandonment of meadows without any interventions have much more negative effects upon the diversity of protected grasslands than extensive grazing and mowing, and combination of both these management practices.