New updating of the website

Updated February 07, 2010

February 07, 2010 BP-21 Website News Service

Photo-fact: An attempt of the investigation of illegal cutting down living Ash trees of old age in protected compartments, 2007

In 2005 a case of the illegal cutting down living Ash trees of old age in the protected compartment 803 of the Korolevo-Mostovskoe area was described and was shown in photos. Eight trees had been cut down. Fats and the proofs of the illegal cutting down are given by clicking the above specified link, and in the separate explanation. In 2007, an attempt to investigate this "dark business" was made in connection with an administrative legal action for slander against ... Read more and see photos here.

February 03, 2010 Irina Orlova, "Narodnaya Gazeta" (The People’s Newspaper) Newspaper Publication: Not losing speed

According to the National System of Monitoring, the environment of the Brest region is characterized by the steady and positive dynamics. Two national holidays – a festival-fair of rural working people "2009 Reaping" in the town of Kobrin and the 600th anniversary of the establishing the reserved status in Belovezhskaya Pushcha - have passed in the Year of Native Land in the Brest region. "All this needed more operative and weighed approaches in the decision-making concerning nature protection tasks", the head of the Regional Committee of Natural Resources and Environment Protection Tamara Yalkovskaya says. What else remarkable was for ecologists of the Brest land last year? ... Read more in Russian or use a special (web)software to translate the text here.

February 03, 2010 "Respublika" (The Republik) newspaper News: A half-million visitor

Alexander Onufriyuk from the city of Brest has become a half-million visitor of a residence of Farther Frost in Belovezhskaya Pushcha. Coming there last weekend to have a rest, he has bought a ticket to the fantastic estate. The ticket has appeared a 500-thousand one sold since the opening door in winter of 2003. The main Belarusian Father Frost has presented to ... Read more here.

February 02, 2010 Website "TUT.BY" News: A half-million visitor to meet in an estate of Father Frost in Belovezhskaya Pushcha

A half-million visitor, a citizen of Brest, was met in an estate of Father Frost in Belovezhskaya Pushcha. The lucky visitor was handed with a photo-album specially issued by the celebration of the 600th anniversary of the reserve. The book tells about... Read more here.

Updated February 04, 2010

January 30, 2010 Individual website "Picture post cards" News: Fedor Ivanovich Doroshevich (born in 1905) – "In Belovezhskaya Pushcha. Bison"

Painter Fedor Ivanovich Doroshevich (born in 1905). The Russian school. "In Belovezhskaya Pushcha. Bison", 1960. ... See the picture here.

January 29, 2010 Vasiliy Smirnov, "Voice of Russia" Publication: What Belovezhskaya Pushcha kept secrets about

How did former USSR's heads, first and general secretaries, other high-ranking officials of the state and noble foreign visitors have a rest in Belovezhskaya Pushcha? The Belarusian organizers of the press-tour have decided to show us Belovezhskaya Pushcha – renovated and, as the saying goes, in all its beauty. It has turned from a state protected game hunting ground to a national park. Belovezhskaya Pushcha, as its today's owners from the Department of Affairs of the President of the Republic of Belarus assert, started the new life. The reserve actually had a hard time to save it from destruction. General secretaries and presidents Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Gorbachev, Eltsin. Read more in Russian or use a special (web)software to translate the text here.

Updated January 29, 2010

December 12, 2009 BP-21 Website News Service

Photo-fact: Transformation of the village of Kamenyuki in the run-up to the Belovezhskaya Pushcha 600th anniversary festivities, 2008-2009

Events, facts, documents and evidence: The village of Kamenyuki is the administrative and tourist center of the Belovezhskaya Pushcha National Park. Kamenyuki can be thought of as composed of two parts, the one being two-storied apartment buildings along the main street and in the center, and the other, rural private houses built primarily of timber. In the 1970’s and ... Read more and see photos here.

Updated January 27, 2010

January 20, 2010 Jury Rubashevskiy, "Vecherniy Brest" (The Evening Brest) newspaper Publication: A forerunner of the Grunewald victory

In December of 2009, the 600th anniversary since the meeting of the Polish King Jagiello (Wladislaw II) and Great Prince Lithuanian Vytautas in the Berestie castle who developed a plan of the military campaign against crusaders has been marked. This year the six-century anniversary of the Grunewald battle, one of the most famous victories of the joint army of Belarus, Poland and Lithuania is expected. Read more in Russian or use a special (web)software to translate the text here.

January 15, 2010 Vera Gnilozub, "Belorusskaya Niva" (The Belarusian Field) newspaper Publication: Under Belovezhskaya Pushcha's canopy

A unique bell tower constructed without nails and secrets of famous annals are kept near Belovezhskaya Pushcha. Those who were fortunate to visit the Pruzhany district can agree that this is one of the most picturesque areas in Belarus. One should to spend a lot of time for travels to study the Pruzhany land as its size is one of the biggest in the Brest region. Read more in Russian or use a special (web)software to translate the text here.

January 13, 2010 Website "RIA NEWS" News: A bison to perish under locomotive wheels in Bialowieza Forest (Poland)

A bison was lost under locomotive's wheels on a railway in vicinities of the Bialowieza National Park, the Polish Radio informed on Wednesday. According to the local police from the Hajnowka town, the bison appeared ... Read more here.

January 08, 2009 BP-21 Website News Service

Cutting and landscaping of greenery in Kamenyuki, 2009

The subject matter discussed below might be the most dramatic and controversial issue in the preparation of Kamenyuki for the Belovezhskaya Pushcha 600th anniversary festivities. This is not only because living beings (trees and shrub) were destroyed in the process while most locals showed no understanding of here.

Updated January 20, 2010

December 08, 2009 BP-21 Website News Service

Photo-fact: An example of the cutting plot where everything what's possible was violated, and even more ..., 2005

One of the cuttings areas is shown below on which all ecological violations as theoretically possible for the forest cutting down have been made. The pine stand with a high share of spruce trees grew in the compartment 802. In 2001 a few bark beetle pests' centers appeared. Dying and already dead trees were cut down, however, it did not stop ... Read more and see photos here.

December 06, 2009 BP-21 Website News Service

Photo-fact: Mechanized skidding when cuttings down in the Bialowieza Primeval Forest, 2005 - 2009

Mechanized skidding of logs which very damage the soil surface is one of the violations mentioned above. Damages of the soil and grassy cover are especially strong in Belovezhskaya Pushcha where the trees of 200 years and older are cut down. The modern practice and technologies of minimization of the ecological damage from logs' skidding are nearly not used ... Read more and see photos here.

December 04, 2009 BP-21 Website News Service

Photo-fact: Burning wood residuals when cuttings down and forest cleaning, 2005 - 2009

Burning wood-cut residuals, brushwood and dead wood is one of the violations mentioned above. Unfortunately, this kind of the progressive and ecological-friendly practice is completely ignored by the management of the national park over the last decade. Moreover, employees of forest areas were punished for non-burning of wood-cut residuals. According to some information, the situation concerning non-burning of wood-cut residuals is ... Read more and see photos here.

December 02, 2009 BP-21 Website News Service

Photo-fact: Clear cuttings and dead wood cleaning along tourist routes, 2005 - 2009

Events, facts, documents and evidence: The National Park "Belovezhskaya Pushcha" makes much efforts to develop the tourism for the masses. To show the strictly protected Belovezhskaya Pushcha, the relic forest, sights and the beauty of the wild nature for tourists, the park's staff serves them with excursions in buses travelling along tourist routes conterminous to the basic roads inside ... Read more and see photos here.

December 01, 2009 BP-21 Website News Service

Photo-fact: Clear cuttings of dead wood and "moon landscapes" in the Bialowieza Primeval Forest, 2005 - 2009

Clear cutting of dead trees is one of the violations mentioned above. After that sites cut down mostly turn into so-called "moon landscapes" or "stump landscapes". It is so because it can be said the protected forest is saved, although damaged if 1 to 3 of 10 trees is felled, but it is totally destroyed if 7 to 9 of 10 ones are extracted. Cuttings down of the second type are conducted in Belovezhskaya Pushcha under the musk of "too-much-dead-wood clearing" and "sanitary cuttings". Actually the main goal ... Read more and see photos here.

Updated January 09, 2010

August 2, 2009 Gabriela Baczynska, "www.independent.co.uk"

Important publication: Battle for Europe's last ancient forest (Poland)

Climate change, border disputes and the opposition of residents to expansion threaten eastern Poland's unique woodlands. A contest between competing needs of conservation and economic growth is threatening the future of large parts of Europe's last ancient forest - Bialowieza Forest. On the Polish side of the border, residents are opposing plans to extend the protected zone of this unique habitat, which is under threat from rising temperatures and declining rainfall. Encouraged by international conservation agencies, Warsaw wants to enlarge the area's national park. ... Read more here.

November 5, 2009 BP-21 Website News Service

Photo-fact: Renovation of Kamenets-Kamenyuki road and tree felling, 2008-2009

The program of preparations for the 600th anniversary of Belovezhskaya Pushcha protection's status provided for improving the condition of access roads to the national park, in particular, an overhaul of Route P-83 which links Brest, Kamenets and Belovezhskaya Pushcha. The overhaul of the Kamenets-Kamenyuki section kicked off in the spring of 2008. The section is some 20 kilometers long, spanning ... Read more and see photos here.

November 3, 2009 BP-21 Website News Service

Photo-fact: Road repair in Kamenyuki, 2009

Events, facts, documents and evidence: The plan of preparations for the 600th anniversary of Belovezhskaya Pushcha nature reserve status’s protection provided for an overhaul of Route 83, which links the regional center of Brest, the district center Kamenets and the national park, as well as sections of the transit roads that run through the village of Kamenyuki. Pushchanskaya Street in Kamenyuki had been last asphalted about ... Read more and see photos here.

Updated January 08, 2010

August 4, 2009 Matt Walker, "BBC" Publication: European bison on 'genetic brink'

Europe's largest mammal, the European bison, remains extremely vulnerable to extinction, despite long-standing efforts to save it, new research shows. It survives in the wild in just a few herds, the two largest of which live on either side of the Bialowieza forest which straddles Belarus and Poland. Back from the dead. ... Read more here.

Updated January 05, 2010

Updated January 04, 2010

October 21, 2009 Elena Tribuleva, "Vecherniy Brest" (The Evening Brest) newspaper

Important publication: 600 years is considered to be the history. What is about 200?

A hut heated by a chimneyless stove taken to log-pieces is rotten in a deep forest through the National Park "Belovezhskaya Pushcha" management's fault. Some years ago all the Belarusian media covered this topic. Participants of the project "Pushcha without borders" provided inventory of the natural, cultural and ethnographical relics in year of 2002 in "Belovezhskaya Pushcha" and revealed a hut heated by a chimneyless stove built in year of 1837 and survived by a miracle in the Rozhkovka village, the Kamenetz district At that time it was the oldest wooden construction in the Pushcha on each (Belarusian and Polish) side of the state border. ... Read more here.

October 02, 2009 Inessa Zenina, "Belarusian Green Portal"

Important publication: Behind facade of wild nature protection

Now, when Belovezhskaya Pushcha celebrates its six-hundred anniversary, it is topical to think of "a tune of nature protection" – of all woodland "oases" in our county which we call especially protected natural areas (EPNA). Now the territory where people left the nature alone - it means they give a status of strict protection for the wild nature - is taking only 0.7 % of the total Belarusian area. Ecologists call this figure a criterion of humanity of the county's citizens. How much does wild nature cost? ... Read more here.

Updated November 26, 2009

September 25, 2009 Dmitri Korsak, "Sobesednik" (The Interlocutor) newspaper

Important publication: Three myths about Belovezhskaya Pushcha

On October 3 Belovezhskaya Pushcha celebrates the 600th anniversary of the establishing of the strict reserve status. During the year the village of Kamenyuki, the administrative center of the national park, has been changed literally beyond recognition. Both Belarusians and foreigners have a clear and complete idea of Belovezhskaya Pushcha in their heads. "There are no problems in Belovezhskaya Pushcha", Nikolai Bambiza, director general of the National Park, said to journalists during the final press-conference. We decided to visit the jubilee and find out how much the image created matches the reality. Myth 1: A virgin forest. Myth 2: A balance between science and self-financing. Myth 3: Everything will be fine. ... Read more here.

Updated November 25, 2009

November 16, 2009 BP-21 Website News Service

Photo-fact: Deepening and Rebuilding of Lake Lyadskoye

Events, facts, documents and evidence: Large-scale water hydraulic engineering and land amelioration operations began in Belovezhskaya Pushcha in 2002. Around that time, the Khmelevskoye artificial lake located in the center of the national park was expanded through digging up of the surrounding forests and marshes. This was done without a due scientific foundation, an environmental assessment, or the necessary permissions from environmental protection agencies. In addition, a new reservoir was excavated in place of ... Read more and see photos here.

Updated November 23, 2009

November 14, 2009 BP-21 Website News Service

Photo-fact: Constructing a cannel connecting the Lyadskoe Lake and a Father Frost residence

Events, facts, documents and evidence: In 2007, the management of the national park has made a hydro engineering project in the centre of Belovezhskaya Pushcha, in the area of the Lyadskoe Lake – Teplukhi peat bog. The project idea was in digging through and broadening a drainage canal on the peat bog "Teplukhi" that to connect the Lyadskoe Lake and the Father Frost residence. The basic goal of the project was to boat tourists from ... Read more and see photos here.

October 02, 2009 Tatiana Melnichuk, "BBC Russian Service"

Important publication: Belovezhskaya Pushcha: 600 years of man’s oppression

Belarus marks 600 years since the establishing of reservation status in Belovezhskaya Pushcha. For independent ecologists, these were the extremely damaging years and the unique primeval forest is in the pitiful condition now. Facad instead of Pushcha. Illness and cure. Personas non-grata. European Diploma. ... Read more here.

Updated November 20, 2009

November 20, 2009 BP-21 Website News Service

Photo-fact: Large-scale and ecologically wrong cuttings in the old-aged Bialowieza Primeval Forest

Our information. Traditional and generally accepted methods for forestry are often not suitable as management tools within Specially Protected Natural Territories (SPNT) like the Belovezhskaya Pushcha National Park is. The worldwide recognition of Belovezhskaya Pushcha as a Biosphere Reserve as well as a World Heritage Site does even more indicate that principles of commercial forest management are not acceptable. The credit of these titles is based on ... Read more and see photos here.

November 18, 2009 BP-21 Website News Service

Photo-fact: Creation of a hunting enclosure in the Pashukovskoe forest area

Events, facts, documents and evidence: In the course of history Belovezhskaya Pushcha provided hunting serves for kings and other high-ranking persons who possessed it. In the modern history, in 1957, the State Reserve "Belovezhskaya Pushcha" has specially been reorganized into a State Protected Game Ground for this purpose. The Ground kept this status till ... Read more and see photos here.

November 15, 2009 BP-21 Website News Service

Photo-fact: Creating a water reservoir close by the Bambiza's new manor

Events, facts, documents and evidence: Information was given on the page The director's house about how directors of the national park got an accommodation to themselves. A former small hotel-house in the Pashukovskoe forest area, in the village of Podbelskie Ogorodniki which became an apartment house for the today's director of the national park is also shown there. Something has been changed for the ... Read more and see photos here.

November 13, 2009 BP-21 Website News Service

Photo-fact: Reclamation work on the adjacent territories to Belovezhskaya Pushcha

Events, facts, documents and evidence: Drying land improvement is the factor, perhaps, causing the biggest damage to the natural ecosystems and to biodiversity of Belovezhskaya Pushcha. Lowering the level of subsoil waters after the large-scale land improvement in 1950's to 1970's is considered the main reason from which forests of Belovezhskaya Pushcha, first of all its spruce stands suffer and perish. Tens of publications ... Read more and see photos here.

November 12, 2009 BP-21 Website News Service

Photo-fact: Rebuilding of old ponds at Plyanta and excavations of new ones

Events, facts, documents and evidence: The former Plyanta settlement is located near the national park's tourist center in the southern part of Belovezhskaya Pushcha. Overgrown orchards are all that is left of the farmsteads. Three small ponds, between one and two hectares each, were dug here in the late 1960's and early 1970's. The area of the ponds is part of the national park's recreational zone. Once it had swamps ... Read more and see photos here.

November 11, 2009 BP-21 Website News Service

Photo-fact: An attempt at creating a large new water reservoir in the Lesnaya River floodplain and large-scale alteration of the floodplain landscape

Events, facts, documents and evidence: Reports that the management of the National Park were secretly planning to build water recreation facilities altering the flood-plain landscape of the Pravaya Lesnaya River, which runs through Belovezhskaya Pushcha, surfaced in 2007. In particular, there were plans to dig a ten-hectare water reservoir in the floodplain of the Pravaya Lesnaya River near ... Read more and see photos here.

We are asking KIND PEOPLE, SPONSORS, COMPANIES and ORGANIZATIONS for financial DONATION of our public activities on protection and conservation of the Belarusian part of the Bialowieza Forest (Belovezhskaya Pushcha). Even small-sized contributions are very welcomed because of the dramatic situation. We are also asking TRANSLATORS and other experts for help and bilateral cooperation to protect and conserve the Bialowieza Forest. We will also be VERY GRATEFUL for your technical and other assistance. Thank you in advance.

With your offers, please address to our email pushcha-XXI@tut.by. Your questions and other related information are also welcomed.

The Web-site "The Belovezhskaya Pushcha - 21st Century" is dedicated to providing information about the problems of protection and conservation of the Belovezhskaya Pushcha National Park - this unique nook of wilderness in the center of Europe.

At present, Belovezhskaya Pushcha, which is a National Park, a Biosphere Reserve, and part of the World Heritage, is in danger. There has been intensive activity started in the unique wilderness complex using unsound economic and management methods that threaten to destroy this unique virgin forest.

If the current management policies of destroying this ancient relict forest are not stopped today, then tomorrow will be too late. In this scenario the Belovezhskaya Pushcha will be transformed into specialized forest management enterprise where, under the guise of "wilderness conservation" or "nature protection" the remnants of the primeval old-aged Belovezha forest, ancient flora and fauna species will be ruined. The huge tree stumps and steady unnatural lines of artificial forest regeneration will be all that is left to show to the tourists. Read more [ here ]

Very welcome to our FORUM. The problems of conservation of Belovezhskaya Pushcha and other protected territories of Belarus, as well as of CIS and Poland are subject for discussion. You can send your proposals and opinion about the publications and news, as well as ask questions and discuss problematic topics.