Topland BRD o.s.

The civil organization Topland Brd was founded in July 2011 as a group of volunteers caring of and about their environment and landscape. The founders are determinend to do something positive for the place they live in – several communities southeast of Plzen on the slopes of Brdy Mountains. They are interested in the landscape and the social life in their communities as well. They are asociated professionaly as well, for example landscape architecture, gardening, farming, art restoration, etc. They do have a long-time experience working both in and for the non-profit organizations.

The operational region is the Brdy mountains southeast of Plzen. From the naturalist’s point of view, this region is notable for abundance of protected plant species to be found on the marshy meadows (Natura 2000 territory). Local landscape human habitation history is very long. The Middle Ages left many small fortresses and strongholds behind. Their remains are still visible in the landscape. The baroc era left a deep inprint in the local landscape in the form of pilgrim trails, crosses, and small chaples – very much the same way as in the rest of Bohemia. In the Brdy mountain forest is a strong evidence of many centuries long intensive iron ore mining and processing. The pictures taken from the air in the mid- 20th Century show the cultivated farmland. Then, the era of socialist land-grabbing, collectivization, unification and other unsensitive technology left deep scars in the landscape.
Therefore, Topland’s activities are aimed at the landscape renewal and improvement. They sincerely do believe that an intensive involvement of local inhabitants and their interest and engagement in local nature, culture and history is crucial for our goal to attain.

In essence, Topland just want to:

• Protect the landscape and nature – our main goal as defined above.
• Protect and support the cultural landscape as defined in the European Landscape Convention signed by the Czech Republic in 2004
• Increase the citizens‘ awarness of the landscape values, roles and changes. (See the European Landscape Convention, Article 6A). The same apply also to all relevant private organizations and public authorities.
• Protect all artifacts, cultural values and the landscape character of both urban and non-urban landscape.
• Cultivate human relation development and support development of the civil society.
• Protect the landscape and urban greenery.
• Protect the environment.

Topland activities are aimed at engagement of the local population in planning and delivering the nature protection and landscape renewal projects. In their view, this is the best approach to develope a true appretiation of place we live in. They consider the public participation to be an effective yet unforcing tool to promote care for our landscape and environment. They offer consultation in landscape care, landscape cultural and natural values, working with the public, and engaging the public into the public planning process. In addition, they organize lectures, workshops, schooling, conferences and excursions focusing on their foremost goals.

Furthermore, Topland cooperate with local authorities, interest groups and organizations, even schools of every level from kindergardens to colleges and universities. Needless to say we welcome cooperation with partners in foreign countries.