Answers to questions asked by the magazine "Wild life" about appreciation of the nature conservation situation in Bialowieza Forest (Poland)
The magazine "Dzikie Zycie" (Wild Life), No. 3 / 2006
We asked Professor Ludwik Tomialojc, Doctor of Biology, a member of the Scientific Council of the Bialowieza National Park in the past, and Bogdan Jaroszewicz, Philosophy Doctor of Biology, a member of the International Commission on Protected Areas of IUCN, the former Deputy Director of BNP who now leads the Bialowieza Geobotanical Station of the Warsaw University to give an appreciation of the present management in Bialowieza National Park.
The exact and precise estimation of activity of the administration and the Scientific Council of the BNP is impossible to me because I am located at a distance of some hundred kilometers and my contacts with the members of the Council are limited (those people who had close contacts with me and who trusted me were excluded from the Council). In one's turn statements of the people directly interested in creation of good opinion is not a reliable source because, as it is known, human consciousness has evolutionary developed propensity to fight for one's truth in all possible ways. In this occasion the ordinary people say "each mouse praises an own tail", therefore, (I shall add) the criticizing persons are simply flung mud.
Certainly, I would change with pleasure my appreciation of the situation in Bialowieza Forest and BNP, if any facts confirming it could appear. I suggest, therefore, that it is typical for the human to make mistakes in any difficult businesses and, perhaps, the way of how a man reacts to mentioned mistakes is criterion of moral substance and nobleness of the people.
As to the attitude to the present management of the BNP and its Scientific Council, perhaps, there have yet no great changes in order to compel me to be changing the opinion stated earlier. Instead of verbal condemnation and declarations, let's proceed to the facts of the last half-year. Let readers make appreciation themselves on whether it is the change of the state of affairs, if the management of the BNP and Scientific Council still:
1. Do not take side with the initiators of expansion and strengthening of nature protection to cover the entire territory of Bialowieza Forest! The fact is that they should create such initiatives, at least they should express their official support, instead of usual for them more or less obvious ignoring such initiatives, and also instead of pronounced keeping the rule such as "hand washes hand" concerning the administration of the State Forests which manages a part of Bialowieza Forest.
2. Only public organizations from Poland, Belarus and Russia, being morally supported by almost overall western world, and separate citizens from these countries provide campaigns on protection of last remnants of the primeval Bialowieza Forest. This occurs on a background of keeping absolute silence by the management of both national parks and even of their well-coordinated cooperation directly with the destructors of these values.
3. Instead of conducting the activity directed to DECRESE anthropogenic impact to the BNP through redistribution of a part of tourist traffic to other territories of Bialowieza Forest, the managing bodies of the BNP STRENGTHENED this pressure to a small protected area last months through construction of the huge wooden boardwalk, unnecessary and harmful to large animals, putting in operation a railway for mass transportation of the people, setting up commodity advertising, sanction on the use of chainsaws, cutting down trees damaged by bark beetles (the last measure is disputable from the point of view of today's knowledge) etc.
4. The structure of the Scientific Council, perhaps, was either not generated in the way to include the experts on the most numerous groups of organisms like birds and mushrooms and engaged in the most important problems (hydrology and wood protection with ecosystem approach, not pure forestry one). Representation of the opponents of stricter protection of nature of Bialowieza Forest was also reduced.
5. Are really necessary senseless fireworks (more than twenty events!) created by the management of the BNP with very huge efforts, which are more appropriate to a landscape park or the Promotion Complex of the State Forests, but not to the National Park in any way? Moreover all of these are doing by reason of doubtful 85th anniversary. All of these are INSTEAD OF making any decision concerning at least one problem, which would essentially improve protection of nature in the BNP and Bialowieza Forest, or holding at least one sessions of the Scientific Council with important agenda devoted to decisions far-reaching in the future and joint with Belarus!
The publicly dissociation of the present management of the BNP (by the way, announced by a Chairwoman at a meeting of the Scientific Council) from a civic responsibility for occurrence outside of the relative border in the economic part of Bialowieza Forest is a position de facto contradicting to ideas and purposes of protection of nature which will support the monopoly of the State Forests menacing to reach these purposes. However, the monopoly is doubtful from the point of view of the law because the Enterprise "State Forests" is not a proprietor of state woods, but only their manager. The Enterprise, therefore, should follow those tasks which will be accepted by the proprietor or civil society (it would be good to make it consciously, instead of propagation perplexed by the State Forests), in the name of top authorities of the Republic of Poland.
Professor, Doctor of Biology Ludwik Tomialojc
(Senior Lecturer on protection of nature and sustainable development)
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The Bialowieza National Park is undoubtedly one of the best preserved, therefore the most valuable natural site of our land which is unique in the scale of the Europe and the World. This is way worry of each man engaged in nature protection should induce to discontinuance of commercial and consumer tendencies in the system of its management which started there during last three years (after retiring of the director Dr. Cz. Okolow). Observation on changes of approach concerning protection of this site causes serious reflection on the question - what is a matter which the Bialowieza national park should serve? We see very many problems of nature protection arising in the Park. However, all of them grow out of attempts of transformation of this site to turn it into a machine on producing money. Attempts to open access for the tourists to the most valuable areas of the Park unused for the tourism purposes till now, through creation of attractions for the tourist, is very dangerous. This strengthens the tourist pressure to the Park, simultaneously decreasing opportunities of earning money by the local communities. Putting into operation of a narrow-gauge railway is a good illustration of this problem as it will result in deep and long-term (everlasting!?) disturbance of the Park ecosystems and life of their flora and fauna. This will simultaneously "sow" the territory of the Park with next crowds of the tourists while the main principle applied in all of the similar small-sized protected areas all over the world is the use of glory and merits of the site in order to attract the visitors. At the same time any infrastructure is constructed out of their borders, to save the protected site from destruction and to ensure as much as possible benefit for local communities. I will not make comments regarding the fact that the institution, which is obliged to observe nature conservation legislation, provided financial investment by braking legislative and administrative law within two years. And now, after a huge sum of money has already been invested, it addresses the Scientific Council in order to get its opinion. The fact that the director of the National Park right now, after numerous protests and critical publications in the press, ordered to execute formal requirements concerning that investment is the funny situation. However this did not decline him to cancel further implementation of this harmful idea.
Maintenance of the railway track will result in opening ways for invasion of alien plant species which, as a rule, use for settling places with disturbed primary vegetation cover. The further use of the railway will surely cause distribution of alien plant species in the area of the Park (plants distributed along tourist paths within the territory under strict protection is the good example of this process) and will considerably worsen environmental conditions for the animals living in the Park. It is necessary to remember that the territory of the Park is a refuge for many animals, especial in the hunting season where they stay to avoid troubles provoked by the hunters. Since now the railway will cut their migration roads. However, intervention into the nature of the Park is much deeper. A small roofs, benches, sheets, ethnographic museum, bonfire place etc. are set up at almost each crossing of tourist routes. In 2004-2006 there are plans to make constructions (amounted over ten and covered nearly 5,000 hectares) built on the meadows for keeping hay under the roof to feed up bison in the buffer zone of Hwozna. They will also be used as places to serve as a bison watching points for the tourists. All of these will result in gradual disappearing of places of wild nature behind the borders of the area of strict protection in the Bialowieza National Park.
Direct intervention into ecosystems of the Park, including the areas of strict protection, also became stronger. Before 2003 there were only two cases of use of chainsaws within the strictly protected territory to cut trees tumbled down across of the roads. Energetic discussion was always prior to acceptance of the decision. Now roads in the most valuable natural part of the Park which is under strict protection are cleared each year by means of chainsaws. Did the BNP really get more cataclysms for the last two years than it happened during the period of previous eighty years? By the way, the director Popiel has rather specific concept of protection of nature … "actions to cultivate forest, intervention with the use of chainsaws, to regulate natural processes or to change the structure of forest towards the way of more natural composition that enables to employ the local inhabitants and extract a certain amount of wood necessary for both needs of the Park and local population" (the quotation of the declaration by J. Popiel taken from the publication under the authorship of J. Korbel "Strong protection vs. active protection: two faces of the Park"). The concept of correction of nature in the best preserved forest by use of chainsaw is rather strange. Arguments given for justification of these actions are also funny. What kind of works in the forest actually executed by local firms (in 2003-2005 the cost of annual works fluctuated in the limits of near 100,000 Zlotys) is talking if maintenance, building and design works were executed in the area of the BNP in 2003-2004 and cost approximately the same sum which, without the public tender, was transferred to a firm … from Kujawsko-Pomorskie province (c.a. 500 km distance from Bialowieza Forest)!
Where is that care and assurances about employment of the local population then? Or do they cover only the workers of the wood processing sector? The same is to satisfy local needs for wood. In 2003 out of the wood harvested in the Park 48 percents were sold to the customers our of the Hajnowka county, while the most of firms were from vicinities of Warsaw. In 2004 abroad of the region were sold 36 percents of the wood. Hence, local needs for wood were less than financial appetites of the Park. The on-going fellings will also provoke further growth of the costs: cutting down - renewal of the forest – replanting some parts – re-iterated maintenance of plantations – fencing of the forest area (to save the planted trees, but at the same time it limits a living space of ungulates). In 2005 the construction of about half a kilometer long fences in protected forest ecosystems of the BNP has been planned and I do not doubt that this plan was reached! The plan for 2006 (according to a project submitted for the members of the Scientific Council last autumn) is one kilometer more. The sum of costs per unit of the forest area in a long-term scale exceeds the income gained from sale of extracted wood.
Destruction of nature in the name of "production" spreads also to non-forest ecosystems. Since 2003 in the Palace Park vegetation is mowed twice a year. It is done without any researches on flora and fauna and without monitoring subsequently changes, started on meadows. Efficiency of this form of protection of nature is measured by tones of harvested hay. No one needs to be the expert on meadows to realize that such a intensive management will cause degradation of soil and species composition of the meadow. Such an intensive mowing, conducted in not proper terms annihilates fauna of butterflies, hymenopterans and other nectar depending insects. Unfortunately, monitoring of environmental changes occurred under influence of human activities in the BNP does not exist. The very rare species of digging wasp Ectemnius spinipes (it's known only from three localities in Poland) which was observed quite numerous in the Palace Park on blossoming specimens of Heracleum sphondylium two years ago can serve as the example of above considered losses of biological diversity in the area of the Park. In 2005 single individuals of this species were found only in other parts of the Bialowieza glade. This species was simply "mowed clean" in the Palace Park. It is possible to assume, that this regards many other species of "nectar-consumers" too. By the way, even the basic knowledge on nature protection teaches the rule that, executing of any actions, need to follow the rule "a maximum of information and a minimum of intervention".
Unfortunately, the big part of problems connected to nature conservation in the BNP grows out of tendentious selection of personal composition of the Scientific Council of the Park. The representatives of some scientific disciplines, rather important for the Park, like ornithologists and mycologists - experts on mushrooms, were not invited to become the members of the Council at all. While the invited experts (some of them are of very high qualification) live in distant areas, therefore they are able neither operatively to estimate measures on nature protection in the Park, nor to make their deep estimation. Such the people express their opinions on the basis of limited information selected by the administration of the Park. At the same time, no less professional representatives of the same scientific disciplines who were connected with the Bialowieza National Park for many years and observe its activity almost each day, have not become the members of the Council. The reason is not in a lack of their professionalism. This is only to remind the truth that the National Park should serve nature protection, instead of its destruction.
Bogdan Jaroszewicz, Philosophy Doctor of Biology,
The head of the Bialowieza Geobotanical Station of the Warsaw University,
The member of the International Commission on Protected Areas of the International Union of Conservation of Nature (IUCN)
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