THE BARK BEETLE IS NOT PATRIOT
The article by Anatoly Kozlovich,
Published in «Narodnaya Volya» (The People's Will) Newspaper, #20,
February 1, 2003
On Wednesday, 29th January 2003, the Property Management Department of the President has arranged a
We started in the village of Kamenyuki, the capital of the Pushcha. Before we were packed in two small buses for a tour through the forest of four hours, we received a four-page document with an illegible signature. It informed us about today's management of the National Park. In this document it was stressed to write an «objective and honest article where the main criterion should be journalistic conscience» with no «unreasonable accusations».
We could read in the document that recently the Belovezhskaya Pushcha National Park became an «object of big attention of separate mass media». These media discussed «the way nature is used according to own opinion». It was stated that «the authors of such publications have not the faintest idea about wilderness nature protection, and specificity and. And these journalists have neither knowledge of the specific features of the natural complexes, of the Belovezhskaya Pushcha and its ecosystems, the nature protection legislation (what is allowed and what is not allowed) nor the status of the National Park (what is and how is going on).»
Judging by his aplomb, the not designated author-exorcist had at first right ideas about what is allowed and what is not allowed. Second he also meant that «The People's Will» published many articles about the current tragedy of the Belovezhskaya Pushcha in which the newspaper states that present authorities consciously transform the reserve to timber enterprise. I will remind some author's names: Valery Dranchuk, the editor of the «Belovezhskaya Pushcha» newspaper, the publicist-ecologist; Heorhi Kazulka, Philosophy Doctor in Biology, the former deputy director of the Belovezhskaya Pushcha National Park; and of course, me, Anatoly Kozlovich. I've written a lot of articles and books about wilderness and nature protection, drainage problems and ecology for thirty years.
Today the National Park «Belovezhskaya Pushcha» consists approximately of 120 thousand hectares of forests, bogs, felling clearings, glades, roads, cutting lines between compartments, river valleys and floodplains, fields and young forest plantations. The Wilderness Protection Zone, or strict reserve, where the Pushcha continues to live without human interference, occupies about 20 percent of this area. By the way, according to an alternative opinion this 20 percent is too small. The Pushcha does not have the power to support its own sustainable balance. Therefore it is necessary to extend the strict reserve to at least half the territory of the Belovezhskaya Pushcha. Only then the Pushcha can really become a reserve and a model of nature monument of world importance.
The major part of the Pushcha, 80 percent of the territory, is called the Regulated Nature Zone. Here the journalists were brought at first. And it was here that we felt the shock when we were looking at the Pushcha's apocalypse.
Trees were fallen one over the other and had transformed the forest into a big mess. The forest workers with axes and saws swarmed around. From the remnants of the trees, the cut trunks and branches, they made bonfires between century old oaks. The color of these multi-colored bonfires depends on the kind of the burning materials: spruce, aspen, pine, birch… The flame, shaggy and black at the top, is swayed hinter and thither being moved by wind. It scorches oaks, sky, faces, ground, barriers plants, undergrowth, soul, mosses and the future.
Places where the forest was already cleared away, and where blockages were ordered somehow, really represented a lunar landscape: trees were turned out and lay with their roots upwards. It was like the forest showed its intimate parts shamelessly. Peat looks black and sand yellow, wide stumps become white and water glitters between the roots and in the holes.
Stumps and turned out trees were not removed. After felling they are left on the spot until they decay. There is no plan to take care of the aesthetics of the forest, because there is shortage of special engineering, money, technology, economic feasibility, hence and desire. Our descendents will observe the lunar fields in the Belovezhskaya Pushcha with pain, even if the forest will be revived here. That could be done by spontaneous growth or with help of the workers of the Reserve, when they would prepare the sufficient amount of seeds. But seeds are deficit at the moment.
The Belovezhskaya Pushcha looks like a sieve. Only one powerful oak and one ship pine have stiffened lonely on these lunar glades. They are the strongest and have not fallen, but they are doomed for death. They have always been growing closely surrounded by their brothers and sisters, they cannot live on their own after they had lost them.
As the workers have explained to us, there are two reasons why the Belovezhskaya Pushcha becomes degraded now. The first reason was caused by nature itself. Storms passed through the Pushcha twice in 2002, in February and July. They blew down 50 thousand of cubic meters of the forest of all kind of species on an area of 181 hectare. These storms have produced the same volume of cubic meters of the wood on different spots.
The second reason of the Belovezhskaya Pushcha's tragedy is the «unforeseen mass breeding of the spruce bark beetle» in June 2001. This beetle has damaged spruce forests, which occupy 14 percent of the Pushcha's territory. After the beetle attack these damaged spruce trees dries out and storms easily blows them down.
For an effective control of bark beetle it is necessary to remove all infected spruce trees to prevent further development of this pest. That is the basic rule of foresters. To follow this rule, we waited in the Belovezhskaya Pushcha National Park, it is hard to believe, for six years. You see the bark beetle has not appeared in 2001, the last time it was present was in 1993 concentrated on small spots. Three commissions consisting of well known scientists and experts from Minsk and Gomel (Forest Institute), representatives from the government, from the Ministry of Natural Recourses and Environment Protection and from the Property Management Department of the President studied the problem of bark beetle.
However, in the Polish part of the Belovezhskaya Pushcha, where the spruce also was an object of attack of bark beetle, foresters carefully examined every tree. After detection of the first symptoms of appearance of the beetle, they remove damaged spruces, thus depriving the beetle of new food. Polish foresters, who were invited to Kamenyuki village, said this on a press conference.
they blundered with the process of multistage
I have experienced in the Pushcha how much arrogance these specialists had 20 years ago when they accused me being a dilettante. On a meeting of the Scientific Council they discussed my essay concerning the madness of domestic drainage. 30 years ago they, like an arrogant pack, blamed me that in the press I pleaded for the villages without «perspective». They had condemned these villages to disappear. During all my journalistic and literary life, they have not ceased to accuse me to lack patriotism and to blacken the country and the people.
In Kamenyuki I have seen one of these academicians, familiar to me, who recently said elsewhere over and over again that it is necessary to drain a harmful bog. Today with the same aplomb he states that this drained bog should be restored. An aged patriot was brought so that he can continue to mislead me.
No, I say to this academician, I will not allow it! Your drainage program was, at first, the main reason of mass intervention of the bark beetle in Pushcha. Although you said that the aim was to intensify agriculture in Belarus with the purpose of an increase of dairy cattle specialization and improvement of the life of workers, which is a continuation of the policy of Petr Masherov, the chief of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Byelorussia.
Bogs around the Belovezhskaya Pushcha are drained. Spruce is a moisture preferring species. When you explore the ground near the roots of the spruce tree, you feel that the water has disappeared. The ground is too dry for spruce. Beetles like such trees. This is an example of a complex degradation of the human being, nature, experts and society. Today this scheme makes that the Belovezhskaya Pushcha becomes destroyed.
A man of sixty years old, unfamiliar to me, has identified me and hailed me in a crowd of journalists and experts. Why don't I call his name? You will understand. For him the Pushcha is the place of work as well as a source of patriotism. He did read my ecological assays. Here in the forest he quoted several phrases of them. The boastful bragging of truth of the last example triumphed in his tone.
Of course, he accused me of blacking. In the first case, he said, it is necessary to praise the Pushcha so that it will make the people think of it with pride and with patriotism for the nation. And when the people are proud and patriotic, it is possible to state constructive remarks «concerning the Pushcha». For this it is necessary to be an expert instead of a writer who composes a delirium about the destruction of the Pushcha.
I staid patient looking his «cock impulse» and asked: «Well, I admit, I might have had a delirium, but what about Heorhi Kazulka, the scientist who well knows the Belovezhskaya Pushcha. He is the author of serious articles in the »People's Will« newspaper and other editions?» The patriot replied without being troubled by his moral principles: «He is a sick man, he lies, he is ready to be put in psychical clinic!»
I ask to Heorhi Kazulka to ask for apologies. Here are two specialists, who have known each other for a long time and worked hand in hand for many years, now they have become ideological enemies. It is possible to project their mutual relations to other comrades and misters, who have relationships to the Belovezhskaya Pushcha today.
The Pushcha became an arena for a display of human ambitions. Here is a struggle in progress of demagogical patriotism and critical realism.
At this historical moment, narrow minded professionals, who successfully work in the narrow niche, but are not capable to see the Belovezhskaya Pushcha in the human context, are winners on the Pushcha's arena. They do not like «greens» and ecologists. Their love to the Belovezhskaya Pushcha has a specific character, like as people love impressive stacks of commercial timber. Their timber processing factory turns the Pushcha with metallic sequence to a building square beam, board, plank. Their opponents dream to dismantle this process.
To feed a modern sawmill, living trees are cut in the Pushcha, so assures Heorhi Kazulka. Nickolai Bambiza, the general director of the Pushcha, reacts peremptory that this is lie. Where is the truth? Today the truth is with the power.
Patriots are winners today. They trust their infallibility, so that they have not even given us the possibility to listen to the defeated side. When journalists asked why the carriers of the alternative information about the Pushcha are not invited to a press conference, they have got an answer that those are … unknown.
The winners could not obligate bark beetles yet, amounted 4.5 million specimens per 1 hectare, to serve winners themselves. Why was it no success? It was because the bark beetle is not a human being, which means that it cannot be a patriot of the Pushcha.
Belovezhskaya Pushcha — Minsk