The knocking of axes broke the ancient silence of Pushcha
The article by Elena Tribuleva,
Published in «Vecherniy Brest» (The Evening Brest) Newspaper,
August 03, 2001
Owing to the care of Ivan Titenkov, the former Manager of the Property Management Department of the President, century old giants are being cut down.
Saw teeth or axes of woodcutters have never been driven against the living flesh of the trees from the Byelorussian part of the Belovezhskaya Pushcha in the
The largest territory of the old Pushcha (now it is approximately 100 thousand hectares) contained a quite sufficient amount of dead wood to supply the sawmill that belonged to the reserve to full capacity. And suddenly a news comes, like a thunder out of the clear sky: in the National Park «Belovezhskaya Pushcha» the sanitary clear cuttings have been initiated in seven quarters of the forest, adding up to 50 hectares. These are the same protected quarters where economic activity with minimal negative effects on the ecological systems has been developed till now. In other words, it was permitted to pick mushrooms and berries and to take out dead wood from the Regular Nature Protection Zone which covers 70 % of the whole territory of the national park. And now we hear about clear cuttings.
Moreover, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection authorized them — the Deputy Minister Vasiliy Podolyako has put his signature on the approval for clear cuttings. Such a decision was occasioned by the act «Results of the spruce stands inspection», elaborated without consulting the Scientific and Technical Council of the park or the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus. The inspection revealed that the bark beetles, which are unfortunately known to foresters as pests, attacked the century old spruce trees in seven quarters of the reserve. The decision of the commission, which included representatives of the Ministry of Forestry and of the Property Management Department of the President, was unequivocal: the infected forest is subject to cutting down.
However, many employees of the reserve suppose that the mass invasion of the pest-beetle became only a pretext for
Nature itself established the relations of the forest and the pest: bark-beetles occur somewhere and in the same time disappear somewhere. Scientists consider this as part of the changes that affect in a century the vegetation of the Pushcha. The deciduous trees that were not able to reach the sun while they were in the shade of the spruce branches, replace the lost spruce stands affected by bark beetle. Then, representatives of the coniferous species appear among them and the forest is renewed. In principle, as scientists from the Pushcha consider, there was no need to announce the «sanitary cleaning» of the forest. And as for making clear cuts in the forest, the local workers, loving Pushcha up to altruism, could not have imagined this not even in their worse dreams. It is necessary to underline the courage and persistence of these people: because of their endeavour another commission has come to the Pushcha last week.
The members of this commission were representatives of the Academy of Sciences, the Ministry of Forestry, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection, as well as scientists and experts of the national park. While inspecting the quarters which have been deferred for cutting, they uncovered some curious details. First of all, the selective cutting of the «living» forest had started before the official sanction had been received. Secondly, absolutely healthy trees including century old giants have been subject to cutting. Thirdly, the trees that have been felled and that were infected with harmful beetles have not been taken out of the forest in 10 days time as the technological discipline of the sanitary cuttings imposes, but have been left to lay there for months.
«There was the impression that the protection and preservation of the Pushcha had served only for covering the energetic economic activities», one of the members of the commission, who wished to keep his identity, told the journalists. The members of the commission have categorically been against the cutting of living trees in the Pushcha. Consequently the clear cuttings stopped. The question is for how long? The same source informed that the general director of the national park, Nickolai Bambiza, advised the members of the commission not to remain under the illusion of an apparent victory. The new owner of the Pushcha is obviously interested in the continuation of the cuttings.
The majority of the reserve employees link the economic zeal of the director, who replaced in this post the native to Pushcha — Evgeny Smoktunovich three months ago, with the financial crisis of the park. Some years ago Vasiliy Zhukov, the former general director of the Pushcha, and a protege of Mr. Titenkov (former Director of the Property Management Department of the President of the Republic of Belarus), using a foreign currency loan purchased a timber processing unit with a capacity of 150 thousand cubic meters per year from a German enterprise. This unit exceeded the capacity of the existing sawmill by 2.5 times. How did Mr. Zhukov and his patron manage to motivate the purchase of the expensive sawmill bench that processes crude wood remains a secret till now. But the park's account has been credited. And since then the park has got a deep debt hole. Over a year and a half the park scraped up with difficulty some payments for the credit (according to some sources, the loan makes up to 1.5 million US dollars). All this time the new sawmill was used at insignificant capacity: the directors which replaced Mr. Zhukov (first Mr. Zhuravlev, and then Mr. Smoktunovich) could not allow the felling of the living forest to start. However, since July 1st, banks already required payments for the credit. Money for this purpose could have been made only if the malign sawmill worked at full capacity. The bark beetle has come just at a right moment…
Nickolai Bambiza has the long-term reputation of a determined economic planner. It is possible that this was just the reason for his nomination as chief of the Pushcha. Once he was the manager of another protected territory in our country, the «Pripyatski» National Park and, according to some stories, he was successful in creating a large sawmill on the Forest Game Ground, a branch of the «Pripyatski» Park. However, his economic grasp has been considered very intent in the Pushcha. The majority of the employees of the park do not share his managing methods (people say Nickolai Bambiza is not excessively considerate with his subordinates), and neither his reliance in the way the park is earning money regardless of costs. They consider a crime that fellings of the «living» wood are taking place in the Pushcha, the only surviving part of the relic forests that covered the whole territory of Europe in the past. However, there are few who have the courage to act openly. An oppressive atmosphere of suspicion and fear reigns in the reserve. All the park employees, who met and talked to the correspondent of the «Evening Brest », asked one thing: that their surnames should not be mentioned.
How can Pushcha get out of the debt hole in which the park is going deeper and deeper after the purchase of the sawmill? The locals see only one way: to get rid of the unnecessary voracious sawmill as soon as possible, and the part that acted as a guarantor of the purchase should clear off the debt.