Regional Report: Czech Republic

The Czech republic is a country in the heart of Europe and a member of EU. Except for a few places like National parks and National protected sites, collecting is not restricted. But by law you need a permit from the Mining Bureau (Báňský úřad) to access ANY mines, shafts or adits, including those medieval and long abandoned! The law about accessing quarries is a bit uncertain and generally it's best to ask the owner. Some quarries don't allow access officially but wouldn't mind if you go there on weekends (if the quarry is not guarded by a security agency). Best you could do about collecting in Czech Republic is to try to contact local collectors, in most cases country folks don't speak English and only a little German. And locating many sites is very difficult if you don't know where to go. There's no limit on accessing meadows, fields (if there are no crops of course) and forests - they must be public accessible by the law and the owner is not allowed to kick you out if you do no harm. Only limit about collecting is that you are not supposed to damage plants or trees. On some certain sites there are diggings in forests, which is of course illegal. If you go there with hammer and collect, it's not a problem, but it's not the wisest idea to dig there and be caught by the forestry service. Many old Czech specimens, especially from foreign collections have still German locality names. These names are no more valid or used and some are very difficult to recognize under original Czech names. Also please do not add these localities into the Mindat database - it causes duplicity of many sites. Rather add them as a synonym (in parentheses) to the proper named locality. Note: Old German names of Czech localities may be found here (if not given in the database): http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_deutscher_Bezeichnungen_tschechischer_Orte

For full locality listing click here. Alternatively: Click here for heirarchical list of localities in Czech Republic