Members of parliament advise to rescue the Pushcha immediately
The article by Elena Tribuleva,
Published in «Brestski Kuryer» (The Brest Courier) Newspaper, #83,
October 08, 2003
This week conclusions made by the «parliamentary» commission after inspection of the National Park «Belovezhskaya Pushcha» in July of this year are known. The case of arrival to the Pushcha of the «high» commission headed by Maria Khudaya, chairperson of the Committee on ecology, natural resources and dealing with catastrophe aftermaths under the Parliamentarian Assembly of the Belarus and Russia Union, was collective appeal-letters of inhabitants of the village of Kamenyuki and some public ecological organizations devoting the situation in the Belovezhskaya Pushcha and infringement of principles of social justice by the administration of the Reserve.
The main conclusion of the commission was the Belovezhskaya Pushcha really got serious troubles. It is connected to a lot of factors: the drought of last years which stressed consequences of conducted earlier drainage of surrounding lands resulted the weakness of spruce forests and contributed to mass multiplication of the spruce bark beetle (at the end of July of this year 1881 centers of mass reproduction of the bark beetle and 137 cubic metres of affected wood were revealed in Pushcha). Besides this strong hurricanes passed through the Pushcha last years and brought big damage. The commission considers that works on improvement of the situation are obviously not sufficient. There are many factors of it including because of weak scientific contribution. On July there were only 16 employees in the scientific department of the Park and only two of them are Philosophy Doctors. For last two years the administration of the Reserve is essential reduced the research staff and, as the fact, the most important scientific group of forest inventory was almost liquidated. In opinion of the members of the commission, it coursed low efficiency of works on the struggle against bark beetle and the forest restoration.
Besides there is very high labour fluidity in the Reserve, basically it concerns the local population what causes serious discontent of local inhabitants. Among dismissed employees there are many qualified experts who could much do for preservation of our natural treasure which is only in Europe, is resumed in the commission's paper.
Among huge number of recommendations of the commission regarding changing the situation in the Park, there is also the recommendation to the Property Management Department of the President of the Republic of Belarus to consider the problem «On staff policy of the administration of the National Park »Belovezhskaya Pushcha« and on visit rules for the local population living on the territory of the Park». The inhabitants of the Kamenyuki village, who wrote the collective letter and expected promulgation of results of commission's inspection with the hope for future changes, obviously expected greater issues. Now majority of those who have lost a job in the Park, are warring first of all about social problems in the Reserve. Unfortunately, the outcomes of the commission almost do not mention them.