If the Government approves the Ministry of Environment’s proposal, the protected area would increase by 621 hectares to almost 1747 ha. It would include the Šilainiai eldership of Kaunas city and the Užliedžiai, Babtai, and Raudondvaris elderships of Kaunas district.
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After expanding the boundaries, the entire Raudondvaris manor homestead, fragments of Kačiūniškės manor, Babtynas manor, known as Žemaitkiemis, Piepaliai, Babtynas hillforts with settlements, as well as a section of the Raudondvaris road would be located within the protected area.
As Tomas Tukačiauskas, advisor to the Ministry’s Nature Protection Policy Group, told BNS, the expansion of the protected area aims to preserve the most valuable complex of the lower Nevėžis river valley. Due to its biodiversity, natural river meadow habitats – mown mesophyte meadows – are particularly valuable there.
After expanding the boundaries of the protected area, it would include protected Nevėžis meadows with habitats of corncrakes listed in the Lithuanian Red Data Book and 300 ha of slope forests with purple flat beetles found therein.
„There are two complexes: one is natural meadows with corncrakes, because ploughs do not reach there, in the valley near the river. And the second thing is the Nevėžis slopes, which become steeper as they approach Kaunas, and on those slopes there are specific slope forests – oak groves,“ T. Tukačiauskas told BNS.
The corncrake population has been monitored in the protected area every two years since 2017 – it is estimated to be stable and reaches 11-13 pairs.
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On a Lithuanian scale, the most significant corncrake populations are protected in the protected areas of the Nemunas Delta and the Venta River valley.
The protected area of the Nevėžis Landscape Reserve is important for the corncrake because, in central Lithuania, an intensive agricultural region, it is one of the few areas where the corncrake can breed in such abundance.
According to T. Tukačiauskas, expanding the boundaries of the protected area would restrict the construction of new infrastructure objects.
„The construction of wind turbines, solar collectors, establishment of new farming areas, construction of new homesteads, new roads, bypasses will be restricted. Several homesteads, a few manors, small cemeteries, and part of collective gardens on one side also fall within the area. Of course, they will continue to exist as they have, they are an integral part of the protected area, but the emergence of new ones is no longer possible or possible with exceptions,“ said the ministry representative.
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The Nevėžis Reserve was established in 1988.
