History of a pine tree from Belovezhskaya Pushcha
The article by Heorhi Kazulka, Philosophy Doctor of Biology, Kamenyuki village, the Belovezhskaya Pushcha
Published in «Brestski Kuryer» (The Brest Courier) Newspaper, #34,
August 17, 2004
It happened approximately 150 years ago. Here in the Belovezhskaya Pushcha a seed bore a pine tree. Millions of trees are born in the Pushcha annually, but not all of them live up to the old years, on average only one of a hundred. The others perish for different reasons. The majority of them die during their first year of life, others only later. Our beautiful tree was lucky. He was able to resist natural adversities. He went through droughts, fierce frosts and strong winds. When he was young the deer went by but did not bite him. Man did not touch him either, even though he grew close to the road that leads to what is now the main entrance of the National Park «Belovezhskaya Pushcha».
The pine witnessed many historical events and, probably showed concern in his own way. A tree is a living being too, even if it's different from man. Our pine tree watched with interest the magnificent hunts of tsar of Nickolai I. He felt sad when his older brothers and sisters died after axes struck at them during the German occupation of the First World War. At that time four timber processing plants had been constructed on the territory of Belovezhskaya Pushcha and millions of cubic meters of valuable wood have been cut down. He also looked with fear at the activity of the English company «European Century Corporation» which harvested about 2 million cubic meters of timber in 2 years — 1936 and 1937. Then, in 1944 he saw the forest being split in two between the Poles and the Byelorussians. He was happy when the Byelorussian State Reserve developed after the war, because the main task of the reserve was preservation of the forest, and this meant that he was also being protected. He got worried when the Reserve was reorganized into a Protected Game Ground in 1957. You see he was already about 100 years old at that time. Foresters call this age of the forest by the term of «mature wood». Our pine could have easily been selected for cutting. But destiny was in his favor.
In
In 1991 the Protected Game Ground was reorganized into a National Park, thus Belovezhskaya Pushcha had a higher nature protection status. However, at the same time legislation allowed the economic activity to intensify. The deep crisis in the country also affected the tourism sphere. The number of visitors of Belovezhskaya Pushcha went down to 10,000 in the beginning of the 1990's, and then up to 50,000 by the end of the century. The National Park also got into serious financial trouble. But the pine tree continued to stand, holding out people's hope for a better future.
It's a paradox, but these are the facts. At that time our pine tree probably did not even suspect that destiny had given the fatal verdict — the time for its execution had already come. In 2001 the management policy in the National Park «Belovezhskaya Pushcha» sharply changed because to that time a powerful timber processing plant was constructed in the Park and a big foreign currency credit was taken in order to import the bench saw. In order to develop the timber processing industry, Nickolai Bambiza — well known to the Belarusian public for the scandals connected with the exploitation of unique flood plain oak forests from the Pripyatski National Park — was named director of Belovezhskaya Pushcha. The new director immediately tried to start clear cutting the living forest under the cover of «the fight with bark beetles». But after exposure and a grandiose scandal, he was compelled to stop illegal cuttings of living woods. Soon however, fellings of living trees in the Belovezhskaya Pushcha took a fresh start. This time they were done secretly. Tens or, perhaps hundreds of huge old age pine trees ended up under the axes.
But what about our pine tree? Alas, he shared the fate of hundreds of his brothers and sisters. In October 2002, the tree was cut. Simultaneously about half a hectare of living old wood of was logged. We could say all these happened before the eyes of the Belarusian people. The reason for this action was «extension of the parking lot». The case, in my opinion, was completely
Last two years confirmed the groundlessness of the «urgent» extension of the parking site. For half a year Belovezhskaya Pushcha showed tourists tens of stumps at the cutting site and nobody thought of doing something. Last summer the stumps were covered with sand. But this site has not been asphalted till now. Nobody from the administration needs this site because the old parking has enough space for cars. So what was the reason for cutting down living forest at the entrance of Belovezhskaya Pushcha? Was it only a «facade» for the heads, was it only meant to serve them as a pretext — «look how concerned I am with the tourism facilities while nobody thought of them before my nomination»?
Today, only the stump covered with sand is left of our pine tree — as a symbol of evilness, callousness and barbarity of the timber merchants who completely and uncontrollably manage the Belovezhskaya Pushcha. Today protected relic forests continue to be destroyed under the cover of «protection» and «restoration» actions, while the nature protection spirit continues to be exterminated from Belovezhskaya Pushcha. If this tendency will not stopped, soon the time will come to replace the bison, the White Tower and old forest from the emblem of the Belovezhskaya Pushcha, with a man holding an axe on the background of stumps and logs.
Photo 1 — In this timber stack the 150 years old pine tree (1) and 100 years old alder (2) are laying (picture taken in 2002)
Photo 2 — The view of today's parking lot after the cuttings from 2002 (picture taken in 2004)