HOW TO FELL THE FOREST THAT TO AVOID MISTAKES
The article by Liliya Khlystun,
Published in «Sovetskaya Byelorussiya» (The Soviet Byelorussia) Newspaper, #23,
February 06, 2003
Russia has the Baikal lake, Africa — the Victoria waterfall, South America — the wet forests of the Amazon and Belarus has the Belovezhskaya Pushcha. All these natural «pearls» are on the list of World Heritage Sites of Mankind. A part of the Pushcha, with an area of approximately 5 thousand hectares, where trees of an age of several hundred years are growing, was included into this list more than ten years ago by a decision of UNESCO. By this way, they confirmed the importance and uniqueness of the most ancient European forest. Today the National Park is in the centre of intensive discussions because rumours about mass fellings are growing, steadily fed by new details about these fellings
To introduce the situation, the correspondent of «Sovetskaya Byelorussiya» Newspaper has taken part in a trip to the Belovezhskaya Pushcha. The Property Management Department of the President and National Press Centre were initiators of this trip specially organized for journalists.
The last year was the heaviest for Pushcha over last hundred years. The famous forest faced two terrible storms. The first storm was on the 27th of February 2002. It lasted only five minutes, but it laid trees on an area of 181 hectares. Damage of a storm which occurred in July is more difficult for account. The traces of this storm can be found in different parts of the Pushcha. Nobody is indifferent when he is seeing a picture of the injured sites. Turned out roots and broken like matches pines, impassable blockages and wood rubbish — that is all what the storm has left in this forest which has the age of several centuries. About a hundred thousand cubic meters of wood was destroyed. It takes more than one month to clear the territory. But the Anna Dengubenko, deputy of general director on science of the National Park, when showing the forest to journalists, thinks about tomorrow's day: «In spring we will start planting oaks and pines here. Their seedlings were brought up from original Pushcha's seeds. After the storm occurred we organized gathering the cones from lost trees on the windstorm plot. This year the structure of the forest will be restored on the area of 150 hectares. It should correspond to the forest like before».
The wood from the places where storm has felled trees is very susceptible for wood fires. This wood is taken out for processing at the timber processing plant in the village of Kamenyuki. This allows the National Park, at least partially, to compensate losses brought by different elements. According to the general director Nickolai Bambiza, the National Park earns 60 percents of its budget by tourism, hunting and trade. The timber processing is the third profitable activity after tourism and trade. The plant basically processes dead wood of dry standing and wind-fallen trees, or trees felled in destroyed spruce stands. Industrial harvesting of the forest is permitted only in the Shereshevskoye timber enterprise, which is not situated in the protected zone. This territory is located outside the Pushcha. About 12 thousand cubic meters of timber per year is harvested there.
Sanitary cuttings and forest cleaning produce the rest of wood. Trees can become ill, just like people, and die because of aging, pests or the influence of diverse environmental factors. Last years the Pushcha lost about 250 cubic meters of wood each year, in a natural way. No more than 20 percent of this volume is taken out for processing. Nearly 16 percent of the Pushcha's area is the Wilderness Protection Zone where human intervention is forbidden. Natural processes are managing these part and scientists monitor them.
But today the
The volume of destroyed spruce woods has past 200 thousand cubic meters. Only healthy trees can resist the beetle because they protect themselves by flooding the bark beetle by their own pitch. But the resistance of spruce in the Pushcha is fairly weak due to large-scale drainage in the sixties and later droughts. Grigoriy Kravchuk, engineer on forestry pathology and native inhabitant, has 40 years of work experience. He is convinced that the best solution is to fell a tree and to take it out the forest after beetles populated this tree — they're localized under the bark — to prevent the spread to neighboring trees. This is exactly the practice, which is applied on Polish territory of the Reserve. Spruce stands there are much healthier than the spruce stands in the Belarusian part of the Pushcha.
«Unfortunately we lost time,» says Grigoriy Kravchuk. «Instead of taking radical measures, discussions about the necessity of fellings of sick trees were hold. As a result, no infected spruce tree did survive because the infection grew to a large-scale catastrophe. If we would have started to remove the infected trees at least two years ago, we would have had twice as less number of infected centers today».
Forecasts of experts give no hope: they expected that the damage of spruce stands will cover 150 thousand cubic meters. Pheromone traps are bought and special trap trees are kept to control the beetle. The state will help to rescue the Pushcha. Last year the National Park got more than 200 millions Roubles to liquidate the effects of storms and to control the bark beetle. But this sum is less then a third of the part of necessary finances. The National Park needs more investments. Scientists for instance, think that spruce can be lost in the Pushcha in general if restoration of the hydrological regime, violated by the drainage, will not be implemented. To prevent these losses, it is necessary to create reservoirs and to heighten the level of underground waters. In a word: it is necessary to correct mistakes of the past.
It is possible to earn money by developing tourism. Good advertising and solid service make it possible to make this unique forest attractive for tourists. Even now, when the development of tourist infrastructure in the Belovezhskaya Pushcha has stopped, 55 to 60 thousand tourists visit the Pushcha annually. This is why the Belovezhskaya Pushcha was declared as the area of priority for tourism development during the recent meeting in Property Management Department of the President devoted to problems of national parks. A project on joining about 40 thousand hectares of forest and agricultural lands to the National Park for the purpose of economic activity development is coordinated with local authorities now. Its implementation will allow to save workplaces and to earn money from hunting or visiting the enclosures for wild animals. Besides this, according to Nickolai Bambiza, a hotel and a restaurant will be reconstructed soon. In spring 2003 the building of a new hotel will start. A modern administrative office, pool and ponds will be constructed. And local tourism will be stimulated. There are a lot of empty houses in the villages of the Pushcha, which can be put in the reconstructed and used for accommodation for travelers who wish to get in touch with the local beauty. The administration of the National Park expects that due to these measures, the amount of tourists will grow up to 100 thousand in the near future.
«You were lucky», said a colleague from the Ukraine once to me. «You don't have a sufficient amount of
We are obligated to save this forest because the Belovezhskaya Pushcha is more than a simple forest.