Data on the incidence, distribution, and abundance of different biota in the present territory of the Czech Republic have been gathered since the late 18th century. Up to this time, much of the accumulated documentary material has been kept in museum and university collections; on the other hand, much of the concrete data or even synthetic papers on particular species or species groups have already been published. Their number has increased on both the central and regional levels particularly after 1945 and is increasing still; in the past two decades, this has been facilitated by publishing various data on the internet. At the same time, in cases of sufficient data available on some of the animal groups, their synthetic evaluation documents surprisingly great and rapid changes that have affected the composition of fauna on the whole territory of this country and in its different regions. Thus, of the 202 bird species regularly breeding in the Czech Republic, the distribution and abundance of only 65 species (32 %) have remained more or less unchanged during the 20th century, that is, over a mere hundred years. On the contrary, the abundance of 75 species (37 %) has decreased and 10 species have vanished, yet the numbers of 62 spp. (31 %) have distinctly increased, including the 30 species that have newly settled in our territory. The consequences of the above changes (for State Nature Conservation on one hand, and different other institutions on the other) are quite clear even though many a time unexpected: nowadays almost exactly 600 invasive animal species are known to occur in the territory of the Czech Republic, many of which have become serious pests.
Much of this change is the result of changes in landscape, including that in management. Much of it has been accounted to the influence of changes in global climate, above all, global warming. Much of the change, however, is still unknown. Data enabling such evaluation are not available in a number of animal groups or earlier data lack synthetic evaluation. Much of the earlier data can be of use in many a respect in analysing the adaptation of particular species to changes in landscape, food sources, synanthropic way of life and its consequences, as well as to their relation to humans in the changing landscape in general. At the same time, these processes are continuous, the same as their documentation and subsequent publication.
Considering the immense scatter of the available data and the difficult exploitation of earlier literature, a synthetic evaluation is impracticable in the case of many animal groups. To facilitate the whole process, it appears useful or even inevitable to gradually concentrate all available data in a uniform database that could permit ready orientation in the available material and location of the relevant data.
Doc.RNDr.Karel Hudec DrSc., Brno 2005