Administration of the Belovezhskaya Pushcha National Park asserts that there is no illegal felling in the Pushcha
The article by Marat Gorevoi,
Published in BelaPAN Company,
January 29, 2003
«There is no illegal felling of the forest in the Belovezhskaya Pushcha», the Director General of the State National Park «Belovezhskaya Pushcha» Nickolai Bambiza declared. He said that during the press conference, which was held in the administration office building of the Park after the press-tour in the Pushcha of representatives of the public and mass-media on January 29. About 50 persons took part in this action; metropolitan journalists as well as Belarusian and Polish scientists were among them.
Let me remind that a group of journalists and scientists concerned with the situation in the Belovezhskaya Pushcha and, in particular, with the information on commercial cuttings conducted on the National Park's territory has initiated this tour. The Property Management Department of the President which leads the Belovezhskaya Pushcha was responsible for the accreditation of participants of this tour. But the former Director General of the State National Park Evgeny Smoktunovich, the expert of the Public Ecological Initiative «Terra-Conventsia» and former head of the Department of Protected Territories at the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment Protection Zdislav Murav'ev, Philosophy Doctor in biology, ecologist Alexey Mikulich, the research worker of the Pripyatski National Park Inna Zenina, the former Deputy Director on science of the Belovezhskaya Pushcha National Park, Philosophy Doctor in Biology Heorhi Kazulka, as well as the editor of the independent ecological newspaper «Belovezhskaya Pushcha» Valery Dranchuk and five more journalists, who initiated the press-tour, were taken out of the accreditation list. Nickolai Bambiza has explained the absence of their names as «a problem with accreditation».
Participants of the trip have visited a number of quarters within the Pushcha, injured after last year's windstorms and infected by bark beetle which attacked approximately 20 per cents of the territory of the protected forest, as the administration declared. It was also stated to the public that the only infected trees are the subject for cutting.
However, during the tour the worker of a sawmill plant Valery Kuchinski has gone up to journalists and said that «Everything written in the newspapers about the felling of the forest is true». «I'm ashamed to tell about the park», he said. Representatives of the administration immediately have led him aside and explained to journalists that «this man is ill».
During the final press-conference the Deputy Manager of the President's Property Management Department Galina Volchuga has declared that the reason for such situation in the Belovezhskaya Pushcha is the wide-spreading of the bark beetle. Six years were lost because of discussions between experts and authority representatives to accept the decision to cut down infected trees or not to cut, she said. According to Galina Volchuga, it has resulted such «tragically consequences».