By judgment of 5 November 2026, No 6 As 108/2026-45, the Supreme Administrative Court dismissed the cassation complaint brought by Lesy České republiky (the Czech state forest enterprise) in a dispute concerning timber felling in the Východní Krušnohoří Special Area of Conservation. The judgment interprets the relationship between the consent to interventions under Section 45c(2) of the Nature and Landscape Protection Act and the so-called Natura impact opinion under Section 45i(1) of the same Act.
The regional authority granted consent to regeneration felling of broadleaved trees in several stands within the site, limited it in time and in space, and withheld consent in respect of five stand groups. Following an action brought by the association Greenpeace, the Regional Court annulled the decision. It held that, before granting consent, the nature protection authority should first have assessed whether the intended felling constituted a project within the meaning of Section 45h(1) of the Nature and Landscape Protection Act, and should have set out that conclusion in a reasoned opinion under Section 45i(1). No such opinion, however, had been issued.
On the substance, the Supreme Administrative Court upheld the Regional Court’s conclusion. Consent under Section 45c(2) determines the admissibility of a specific intervention, whereas Sections 45h and 45i govern the Natura appropriate assessment of effects. Consent under Section 45c(2) cannot substitute for an opinion under Section 45i(1) where the conditions for issuing the latter are met. This is also borne out by the final sentence of Section 45c(2), under which the application of Sections 45h and 45i remains unaffected.
The Court further rejected the proposition that regeneration felling carried out under an approved forest management plan is, by its very nature, not a project. The Act does not make the classification of an activity as a project conditional on its being autonomous from a planning document. The removal of trees alters the physical state of the site and is capable of affecting its habitats. That interpretation accords with a EU-law-compliant reading of Article 6(3) of the Habitats Directive and with the case-law of the Court of Justice (Case C‑434/22, Latvijas valsts meži, and Case C‑127/02, Waddenzee).
The interpretation of Section 4(5) of the Nature and Landscape Protection Act is pivotal. A binding opinion issued for the approval of a forest management plan substitutes for an opinion under Section 45i(1) only in the assessment of that plan. It does not, however, relieve the nature protection authority of its duty to assess a subsequent specific intervention where the conditions for applying Sections 45h and 45i are satisfied. An earlier opinion on the plan may constitute an important piece of supporting evidence, but it cannot establish a general exemption. The opposite interpretation would be difficult to reconcile with Article 6(3) of the Habitats Directive, as also follows from the judgment of the Court of Justice in Case C‑661/20, Commission v Slovakia.