In Belovezhskaya Pushcha "hunt" for those who think differently
By Konstantin Romashevsky, website "Belnarod.org", January 06, 2009
The 600th anniversary since first nature protection in Belovezhskaya Pushcha meets with intolerance to opponents, ignorance to the requirements of the Aarhus Convention about the access of citizens to ecological information. The public expert Valery Dranchuk said that the event of year 2008 was a suspension of prolongation of the European Diploma to the National Park "Belovezhskaya Pushcha", and he is going to live in 2009 under the symbol of ... bison.
The author of the book "Belovezhskaya Pushcha. Resolution SOS" and the head of the Social ecological initiative "TERRA-Convention" has recollected year 1997 with pleasure when the newspaper "Belovezhskaya Pushcha" founded by him has gathered the first number of subscribers, and an editor's column was named as "Year of Bison". The basis, as well as now, was because of the astrological calendar. "It is not the idea without any reasons, was mentioned in the newspaper. Year of Bull. Does not that mean for us and year of Bison! Only people living in countries where monkeys climb the trees and tigers sleep in gorges can pass such a chance. Therefore the Belarusians have to begin the year 2009 with "Belovezhskaya Pushcha" and its favourite - the bison..."
For twelve years many things have changed, says V. Dranchuk, but problems remain the same.
New year under an old sign
I wish to live this year under the symbol of the Bison that to continue struggle for true status of "Belovezhskaya Pushcha" as strictly protected territory and to reach essential changes for the best," the expert thinks that there is a weak hope.
In 2007 the Council of Europe has not confirmed the special Diploma for the national park. The administration in every possible way tried to soften, shade or absolutely deform this fact.
The Strasbourg decision started to develop and received publicity only in 2008 when at last it became clear that the reason of suspension of the Diploma for the next third term was a condition with the clear task to the Belarusian party which was concluded in development of the long-term management plan for the national park and in defining priorities in favour of the natural European forest. I would tell the remains of it. In the diplomatic decision it is not only a good example of local influence of the western structure on pettifogging of the Belarus regime but also the result of long-term appeals of the independent Belarus public to the founders of the Diploma with offers to apply the certain sanctions of the prestigious award that to save the titled protected territory of our country.
The plan is available. The plan is not available.
The present long-term perspective and the purposes of the management of the national park in the form of the developed Plan have been required by the Council of Europe not by chance, V. Dranchuk considers.
The so-called reserved territory could satisfy only the Administration of Affairs of the President in order to use it later in commercial purposes and to steal the national property and the World Heritage Site, he says.
Absence of understanding, in V.Dranchuk's opinion, has been regarded as an unprepared lesson of the Belarusian party and the break of the arrangements, therefore it was the price to lose the special Euro-Diploma by the national park's forest-timber-managers.
As regards the management plan, it was already been taken to Strasbourg by the national park's managers but they are not in a hurry up to make it publicly open on the native land. The public expert has made such a conclusion after his recent pre-Christian trip to the national park.
He has received the incomplete version of the Plan only in December but at second hand. And to start working with it, to do remarks or to make offers, he has gone to Belovezhskaya Pushcha with a specific goal - to receive the draft management plan in the national park, at first hand, and at the same time to listen to experts who developed the future trends for the reserved forest, Valery Dranchuk says. This opportunity is guaranteed to me as to the citizen of the country signed the Aarhus Convention about the public access to ecological information and by my rights of the journalist who writes reports about changes for best in "Belovezhskaya Pushcha".
However the access for discussion is completely blocked, the independent expert marks and adds that the behaviour of the administration of the park is not in time "for the progressive long-term purposes" of the developed document.
I have not been admitted to the scientific department, V.Dranchuk informs. They have explained that the meeting with the journalist is possible exclusively from the permission of the park's general director Nikolai Bambiza who was absent at that moment. The request to copy the text of the draft management plan to my personal flashcard was not been satisfied by the deputy director general on science Dmitriy Bernatskiy who answered that there is no plan in the department... No at all. In the meantime it is known, that D.Bernatskiy not only took part in preparation of the Plan but also visited recently Strasbourg to support its first version.
Physiological climate in the park is the same as before: intolerance to opponents
By V.Dranchuk's opinion, decision-making of the Council of Europe about the suspension of the validity of the Diploma was after the expressive public position antedated and repeatedly sent to Strasburg from Belarus. More than a year ago, in the end of 2007, just before the next meeting of the matter in Strasbourg, Valery has sent the personal letter of protest there.
I have tested repressions and purposeful prosecution from the administration right there during my business trips to the national park and had to write about it on behalf of my own name, he says. Then there was also our collective letter.
The year has passed, the public expert says, and nothing, perhaps, has changed. The physiological climate in the national park is the same: intolerance to opponents, ignorance of the Aarhus Convention's requirements about the access of citizens to ecological information, administrative dictatorship from the general director.
One of the most obvious evidence is the disrespectful attitude to the inquiry of the public activists to participate in preparation of the management plan. Such a condition - participation of the stakeholders in preparation of the Plan - was seen by the the founder of the Diploma, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe. The administration of the national park has not answered to "the letter of five " (March-January, 2008) signed by V.Dranchuk, I.Zenina, V.Bakharev, H.Kazulka, M.Kozel and thus, in the end, has rejected the dialogue with opponents who not only insist more than one year on radical changes in the Belovezhskaya Pushcha's Forest and have wished to take part in drawing up of the perspective. And in June, 24th, during the meeting concerning the management plan organized by the park's administration one of the author of "the letter of five", Heorhi Kazulka, PhD of biology, who lives in Belovezhskaya Pushcha and who came to that meeting, was turned out from the building as the person undesirable and improper for the organizers of the so-called "dialogue", first of all for director general N.Bambiza.
Declarations for Europe
It is the mechanism that is well worked out, in the meantime, confirms Valery Dranchuk. Belovezhshaya's chiefs go to Strasbourg to consultation, meetings, and the involved public learns about it or by chance or through informal ways.
What does it turns out? Declarations for Europe which are carried there by the Belarusian officials, often, to put it mildly, essentially miss an existing state of affairs with real state of things. What is more, trips are not commented on returning. And we do not know what about actually was spoken in Strasbourg to supervise actions of the authorities, to use the situation to the best in Belovezhskaya Pushcha.
The independent expert marks that today the matter can be moved and changed in Belovezhskaya Pushcha.
A small hope appeared to real nature protection which was wishing by the generation of defenders of Belovezhskaya Pushcha starting with the Academy scientists and finishing the third sector. But there is also a danger of the next deceit from the Belarusian authorities and those who have carte blanche of authority and who continue exploitation of Belarusian forest reaches. I have distinctly felt that the main thing for them is to get back the Diploma (for 10 years, instead of for 5 as it was earlier) as quickly as possible. It is to get back that to not be dishonoured for the whole world in a year of so-called 600-year anniversary since first nature protection in Belovezhskaya Pushcha but thus leaving chance to manage as they managed before. The instrument of the European Diploma can work when the public will start to demand the publicity of today's declarations.
Having collided with the administrative interdiction to pass in the scientific department, V.Dranchuk eventually has found not less creative replacement - to be passed with the camera around of the concrete wall by which it is enclosed the GPU - so is in Russian the abbreviation of the today's legal name of the national park when its translation from Russian means the State Nature Protection Institution.
"Both this wall and the wire above it as though have illustrated associations of destruction of the disgusting abbreviation of the Stalin period," V.Dranchuk comments. "It is difficult to understand till now that the so-called Belovezhskaya science works behind the barbed wire".
The National Timber Enterprise "Belovezhskaya Pushcha".
The territory of the industrial zone in the administration center of the national park in the village of Kamenuki
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