Is it possible to share ancient sorrow?
Tamara Glushchenko, Vecherniy Brest» (The Evening Brest) Newspaper, No 62,
August 05, 2005 and August 10, 2005
Isn't it strange that traveling through Pushcha by means of a personal computer, in the flat of Heorhi Kazulka, I was filled by the spirit of the reserve much more than I would have been if I walked along its paths? No, because we get to learn the country better as we become aware of its troubles and problems. We also love more the children whose "year rings" have been counted with our non-sleeping nights.
Heorhi Kazulka conserved and cherished Belovezhskaya Pushcha for sixteen years. In 1985 he, a successful graduate of the biological department of the Gomel University, carried his university diploma in Kamenyuki and was subsequently taken on the staff of the reserve as a researcher of juniper. He presented his thesis, passed through all stages of a professional career and finally occupied a position of deputy director on science.
But in 2001 a powerful hurricane hit Pushcha's staff. "That was the time when Galina Zhuravkova became head of the President's Property Management Department which manages the National Park", Mr Kazulka recollects. Director Evgeniy Smoktunovich was discharged. Leading staff was almost completely replaced and more than half of the middle level employees were fired. But the non-welcomed employees were not the only ones whom the "new broom" swept out! The worst thing proved to be that at the same time vitally important tradition of nature protection and non-destructive human activities adapted to Pushcha were set aside and other methods of forest management which changed Pushcha's face were preferred. But not all the dismissed employees resigned themselves to the appearance of these innovations.
This is how Heorhi Kazulka became the unemployed warrior of the forest, whose shield and sword is a thematic website (http://bp21.org.by/). According to him, tens of facts which demonstrate unlawful acts of the new economic planners, which could be good arguments in a public prosecutor's office, have been compiled here. The independent ecologist is not alone in preparing the data. He is one of a group of persons who hold the same views and call themselves the Initiative group "Belovezhskaya Pushcha - 21 Century". The team basically volunteers for this work and has as main objective preservation of the natural and spiritual sanctity of the relic forest of Belovezhskaya Pushcha.
But doesn't a book stand more chances to open human hearts? This is why Mr Kazulka has written a book with the title "Will Belovezhskaya Pushcha become a true World Heritage Site?" which will soon be published. The title intentionally contains intrigue. Formally, our reserve is such a heritage site. But on the other hand, as the author proves, many things going on in the famous woods are serious threats to its preservation and are incompatible with the high status of UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The book aims at reaching a positive result, therefore creative views and considerations on what activities are necessary to be undertaken. As to negative things, the author gives details during our conversation.
For instance there were attempts to conduct sanitary fellings, an innovation to which Mr. Kazulka opposed at the expense of his job. In previous times wood stands were kept under care and, even for prophylactic purpose, only dying and dead trees have selectively been cut down. Instead of this, the new managers applied - and were actually going to legalize this method specific to timber enterprises - to the entire forest site. The site cleared of trees is uncovered and then is planted with trees in symmetric lines, like in an ordinary commercial forest. People say that only the scandal made by scientists forced the Environmental Protection Ministry to abrogate the already given "go-ahead" to the timber cuts.
Reforestation is also in a muddle. It needs to be done for instance after wind storms and bark beetle attacks. But is it acceptable to plant trees in the Belovezhskaya Pushcha reserve just as apple trees in a collective farm's garden? The scientist says that the view of such plantations resembles a forest pogrom. "A wheeled tractor with huge ploughs drives up in the forest. Let us suppose that only spruce trees were lost in the site infected with bark beetle while pine and other trees were left in place. But the deep furrows made by ploughs break roots and many century-old trees are sentenced to death. However there are special methods which can keep to conservation rules. In particular, a light tractor can drag a mill-harrow to break up soil and to cover seeds. There are also methods well-known to foresters which allow for manual and selective planting of seedlings, avoiding the creation of lined up plantations which are nonsense if taken in the context of natural forest regeneration. "When I worked [at the science department] we made experimental plantations of silver fir and now no forester can identify these sites as artificially planted because we followed the nature model!"
There are also intensely researched scientific approaches for fighting bark beetle. The main condition is to remove the infested and felled trees at the right time from the forest or to de-bark them at the cutting site to prevent the vermin from going into the next life-cycle, leaving the home-tree and attacking other spruces. But, according to information from the environmentalist, timber in volume of one hundred thousand cubic metres was left lying in the Pushcha at the end of 2003 without being removed or debarked, so bark beetles successfully developed and left these trees. People say that even the fact of one such tree being left in the reserve leads to punishment of a forester in the Polish part of Belovezhskaya Pushcha.
Sometimes the famous beetle seems to an ordinary inhabitant like a myth, a too suitable occasion to harvest valuable wood. This is why there is a wish to overdo or fabricate the beetle's role. But the talk with the scientist makes clear the fact that the beetle is present but cannot overstate its capabilities even if it wants to! It turns out that the parasite is not able to win over a healthy spruce tree because it has a lot of pitch protecting it. When a bark beetle starts boring a hole, the hole gets filled with spruce "blood" and the vermin ends up worse than if it had flown into an adhesive trap. If a tree full of pitch is stronger than the beetle there is neither reason nor law that says it should be cut while sanitary cuttings are conducted.
However, the group's website demonstrates such activities take place. In the pictures of highest quality (general view and close-up), one can see trees are full of pitch - so much of it that it is flowing from flat cut surface of huge, relic and monolith-like trunks. The virtual guide switches the frames: this tree would easily flood a beetle with pitch; a beetle would not be able to attack the tree. But all richness protected by nature has been felled and took the form of grouped stacks of trunks, close to the stumps. Why is control absent? My interlocutor says all requests for allowing public inspections were unsuccessful.
The new-built residence of Grandfather Frost (Santa Clause), or more precisely - its location, is a glare example of the things going wrong, from pure ecological view, in the Pushcha. According to all rules, this tourism and entertainment complex should be placed in the lower protection zone, at the outskirts of the National Park. However organizers preferred to go deep into the heart of Pushcha. There they "corrected" the landscape adapting it to entertainment purposes and destroyed a historical site at the same time.
According to the forest protection team, the residence of the "cold-blooded" Grandfather occupied a site in the second zone (one of the four protection zones) where a high level of nature protection is established. Within this zone the only activities allowed are: scientific research, measures for preventing fire, sanitary woodcutting, forest maintenance and reforestation, as well as harvesting berries and mushrooms in limited quantities and carrying them to specially designated sites. Tourism is allowed only with the guidance of a National Park employee.
An article on the website reads: "To serve mass visiting, there is the third zone, the Regulated Recreational Area. It is situated at the outskirts of Pushcha. According to legislation, the purpose of this area is to support development of tourism and activities connected to cultural aspects, leisure and healthcare. This is why the Regulated Recreational Area, not the Regulated Nature Zone, can support construction of Grandfather Frost's residence as an objective for mass visiting. Moreover, there were other suitable sites too. However, the Park's administration violated the zoning principle and built the residence in the second zone, not in the third one. Then, after the residence was already built on the former bison nursery's site, the zoning scheme of Belovezhskaya Pushcha was modified; the site's protection level was lowered and thus became part of the third protection zone".
The historical heritage site was sacrificed and became the land of the New Year's showman. In this place, the Belarusian bison population had been restored after Second World War. Ludmila Korochkina, whose name is tightly connected to the restoration of Pushcha's fauna, lived and worked in a beautiful house on this place. The idea to use this house as a base for a museum of bison was taken into consideration at a certain moment, but "Frost" outstripped it. The historical building was modernized and made to serve as residence, tourist and commercial purposes.
Now an environment of intensive human disturbance for the giants who traditionally populated this reserved area has been created, Philosophy Doctor of Biology Heorhi Kazulka testifies. Series of celebrations and amusements put pressure on what was once the bison nursery. Animals visited this reserved place in the winter season to get supplementary food like hey and root plants and found provisions in specially constructed feeding-troughs. Concentration of bison reached its peak at the nursery's site in winter, so it was very important to preserve these unique animals of Earth which are a symbol of the Pushcha. Now feeding-troughs have been placed close to the residence's fence while the water-trough was placed inside the area alienated by "Frost". Some buildings that served the economic department were reconstructed into subsidiary rooms for the entertainment base.
Thus, Heorhi Kazulka notes - many things in the sphere of power of the today's owners of the National Park have changed. Consciously or not the spirit of the ancient Pushcha was banished from the now easily accessible reserved sites. This trend is visible also in the hotel modernization where, instead of well-made local wood ornaments, plastic in the so-called standard European style appeared. The nicely designed entrance to the museum area - fairytale trees with owls and hares that met the visitors has been thrown out and "cold" faceless giant columns were put in place. Planting thuya trees and ferns, as well as replacing small meadow areas and wild flowers with mowed lawns like in urban areas banishes the spirit of the wild forest in the sites open to public.
The patriot of primary nature is currently preparing one more book for publishing. It is called "Philosophy of the Bialowieza forest". The author makes a deep analysis of the changes taking place in the Pushcha. He considers that the destruction of Belovezhskaya Pushcha starts in the people's subconscious. The person that comes in contact with one of Earth's true great monuments accumulates the feelings of Belovezhskaya Pushcha Forest in his / her heart. Then he / she considers them worthwhile and even holy. If we are to replace the aesthetics of miraculous wild nature with urban-like or standard styles, then no one will hold true love for the Pushcha in his / her heart.
Throughout the centuries, conservation of Belovezhskaya Pushcha meant dramas, crisis, successes, and losses. Now the public "bodyguards" of the Pushcha are worried about the enlargement of the strictly protected zone which has the status of World Heritage Site and which is under UNESCO patronage. The area with this status of strong protection was already doubled in size last autumn. It happened soon after a public scandal connected with large-scale cuts in the Pushcha. UNESCO had sent inspectors and established that the strongly protected patch which covers five thousand hectares of forest (the total area of the Pushcha is of eighty seven thousand hectares) is in order. But experts noted that the other zone, surrounding this core area, is affected by human activity in such a terrible way that it threatens conservation of the selected patch. Then the president's administration listened to the voice of scientists and, taking the written verdict of UNESCO into consideration, announced the enlargement of the strictly protected zone to thirty thousand hectares.
This gesture of good will was an inspiration to Mr Kazulka and K, but they sadly look at Pushcha's map just like before. This is because the strictly protected zone marked with red colour is not an continuous area and, being extended in line, still looks as an insignificantly small patch in the frame of the whole Pushcha's area. According to scientists, this bigger part has been under powerful human pressure for a long time. This threatens overall conservation of the reserved land.
The author of the book "Will Belovezhskaya Pushcha become a true World Heritage Site?" established a quite concrete territory which should be joined to the already reserved sites. It is made up of fifty thousand hectares professionally mapped by the scientist. This scheme is integrating into a more or less single unit. The Philosophy Doctor of Biology considers these borders as really providing protection to the primary forest. By his reckoning, the scientist competently excluded lands destroyed and then artificially reforested by economic planners. This is, for instance, a wood in the vicinity of Dmitrovichi village which does no longer have world heritage value. He also crossed out lands around built-up areas, which are spaces destined to sustainable development and harmonious interactions between nature and humans. He also left aside areas adding up to thirty seven thousand hectares, for economic purposes and fenced the proposed strict reserve by fine topographical contour in the meanwhile.
The tribune appealed the public with these calculations because he is sure that Belovezhskaya Pushcha is very important for our country. It is impossible to value it and it is necessary to give up the economic plans with which current administrators went too far, since the area asking for strict protection too small in comparison to the scale of the forest.
Moreover, the area excluded from economic activity would reward us with income of the highest level namely with ecological, aesthetic, spiritual, educational and other riches.
The area of Belovezhskaya Pushcha granted with the World Heritage Site title is our Fujiyama Mountain. It is hardly worth clambering it, trampling it down and blackening its slopes with kebab smoke. But are we able to love it by keeping the distance and sharing our souls beyond its height?
If we are not able, let's do justice to those zealots who live for the interests of Belovezhskaya Pushcha and not get involved in the business of building bath-houses from ancient pine trees or in loading up wild boars in cars. Let's appreciate those who want ".to allow independent experts to inspect the area and to make independent experts and public activists the watchdogs of the National Park...".
The Belovezhskaya Pushcha is big but trees seem to block our view of the forest.
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