The sawmill in Belovezhskaya Pushcha
The article by Vyacheslav ANTONOV,
Published in "Novye Izvestiya" (The New News) Newspaper (Russia),
December 03, 2004
Thirteen years ago, on December 7, 1991 the leaders of three countries have signed a document in Belovezhskaya Pushcha which started disintegration of the former USSR. It is surprisingly but this historical site had few changes since that time. The hunting and wood fellings are provided in Belovezhskaya Pushcha as before while "chips" are sold abroad. No big private houses were built there. The attempts have been undertaken but Alexander Lukashenko expelled businessmen from Pushcha, his official residence is located in this reserve.
The Belovezhskaya Pushcha in Belarus is the famous reserve, not only in the former USSR bur all over the world. The oldest in Europe relic wood inscribed on the List of UNESCO World Natural Heritage Sites was saved there. Millions people know about Belovezhskaya Pushcha, even if they never visited this site. The former soviet citizens are familiar with this protected area due to the song "Belovezhskaya Pushcha" by Pahmutova and Dobronravov and to its execution by the folk music group "Pesnyary". And not only due to this. Memory of many people keeps the events of 1991 when the Russian, Ukrainian and Byelorussian leaders Boris Eltzin, Leonid Kravchuk and Stanislav Shushkevich signed the famous Belovezhskoye agreement in the Pushcha's village of Viskuly, then the Soviet Union departed this life.
Generally specking, vip-persons visited the Belovezhskaya Pushcha rather often over all times. So, princes of the Great Lithuanian Principality, Polish kings and Russian tsars came for resting and hunting there and, certainly communist leaders of USSR continued this tradition later.
Now the Belovezhskaya Pushcha is the Alexander Lukashenko's inherited land. His presidential residence is located there. By the way, according to a legend the Belarusian Grandfather Frost lives in Belovezhskaya Pushcha also. However the "farther" (it is the unofficial nickname of the president) seldom visits the Viskuly. Maybe because he does not like hunting but maybe he does not want to remember times when the Belovezhskoye agreement was signed: the president of Belarus likes to publicly show homesickness remembering the former Soviet native land from time to time.
By the way, the residence in Viskuly is the former hunting house of Nikita Khrushchev, or more precisely - the palace. Nikita Khrushchev was the guest of the Yugoslavian leader Iosip Broz Tito at one time, lived in a wooden house and hunted. Having come back home he ordered to build the similar hunting pavilion in Belovezhskaya Pushcha. The Belarusians worked well and constructed the huge house, two-storied private residence. Nikita Khrushchev did not like it very much. The people say that he came to give a house-warming party but he refused proposal to live inside of it and spent the night in a special train.
Some little modest wooden houses have been built closely the hunting palace in Viskuly later. Now they are used as hotels. One day in this house costs from 70 to 120 Euro. It is inexpensive if to compare with European prices, although the service in, for example, Finland (for the same sum of money) is much better. But an excursion in the reserve is very cheap and costs about 4 Euro.
As to hunting it is much more expensive, especially if a hunter chooses bison, the king of the Belarusian woods and a symbol of the country because this animal is listed in the Red Data Book. This is why only the diseased animals are allowed for shooting. Nevertheless nearly ten bisons are eliminated per year. The hunters-foreigners pay up to 5,000 Euro for such a trophy.
Who does win of this earning? The "farther" does not allow capitalists to take the national legacy. Cottages of the high-rank officials and businessmen are absent in Pushcha, although they attempt to build them, according to Lukashenko's words. He recollected recently "I thought suddenly seven years ago when I came to Belovezhskaya Pushcha while the "stern" guys started to build private residences and the whole villages. I had two years to be at a war that to push out them from there".
The National Park "Belovezhskaya Pushcha" like other protected natural areas in the country is under subordination of the Property Management Department of the President.
Except for tourism, commercial procurement of birch juice, berries and medicinal plants and commercial hunting, the National Park makes money from the timber harvesting. The Belarusian "greens" and political opposition struggle against this business already over many years. They accuse authorities that hectares of the living forest are felled under pretext of sanitary cuttings. The sawmill built there is operating in three shifts. The experts who worked there began to pose indignation against the "nature annihilation" but they were fired. The inhabitants of local villages do not want to be employed at the sawmill. This is why newcomers from different regions of Belarus or Ukraine are invited as temporary workers.
The administration of Belovezhskaya Pushcha reject all accusations on dumping of the native riches and say about hurricanes which passed through the reserved area nearly each year and the natural aging of trees as the reasons of the large-scale timber harvesting.
Officials from the administration of the president say that bark beetle invasion destroys the forest. But foresters disagree with this statement.
One of the leaders of the public initiative on protection of the National Park "Belovezhskaya Pushcha" and the former deputy director on science of the Reserve Heorhi Kazulka said to the "New News" that a trend of the large-scale fellings reached the peak in 2001 - 2003. At the presence, after a scandal raised by ecologists, the cutting of the living forest is not conducted, at least in the open form.
Nonetheless "greens" continue to sound the alarm: the reserve turns to a timber enterprise. They also protest against artificial afforestation of the cut down sites in Belovezhskaya Pushcha because the natural primeval forest is replaced by the planted in lines trees. Experts say that the general natural view of the forest is changed; the Belovezhskaya Pushcha loses its ecological value and uniqueness.