Belovezhskaya Pushcha: 600 years of man’s oppression
Tatiana Melnichuk, "BBC Russian Service", October 02, 2009
A hunting tower
Kings, tsars, princes ad Communist Party's general secretaries hunted in Belovezhskaya Pushcha. A hunting stand in the National Park Belovezhskaya Pushcha.
Belarus marks 600 years since the establishing of reservation status in Belovezhskaya Pushcha. For independent ecologists, these were the extremely damaging years and the unique primeval forest is in the pitiful condition now.
Fireworks will light up the pomp in the National Park. General director Nikolai Bambiza assures that the noise of the guns has no threat to the nature. Internal regulations allow this on the grounds opened to commercial activities, namely in the Economic Activity Zone, he says.
Among five thousand invitees are pop stars and delegations from neighboring and western countries. The state budget spent nearly $ 2 millions for the big day
Ahead of the remarkable date, a number of development schemes were completed in the park and environs. Alexander Romanovsky, a deputy manager from the Property Management Department for Belarusian President, reported this to journalists in Minsk.
The changes include over thirty new houses for employees, a modern 250-room hotel with a swimming-pool, bar and restaurant, a two-fold increase in the area of the Museum of Nature, new and repaired roads.
"Facad instead of Pushcha"
Independent ecologists view a growing network of roads as a sure sign of encroachment on the relic forest.
Vladimir Datskevich
A mere fifth of the relic forest is left, according to Vladimir Datskevich, a former scientist at the National Park.
Vladimir Datskevich lives in the village of Kamenyuki, the "capital" of Belovezhskaya Pushcha. He talks of hundreds kilometers of new roads, noise and air pollution, clearances that could be driven through.
Vladimir had been a scientist at the National Park for 40 years since 1945. On his memory, attempts to preserve the relic forest were made only after WW2, but they faltered in less than a decade.
Back then, scientists viewed 46% of the relic forest as damaged or destroyed. The figure grew to 80% in our days, according to Vladimir.
"The first records about Belovezhskaya Pushcha date to when Jagaila, the knight of the Great Duchy of Lithuania, restricted hunting in his forest. Since then, there’s been no end to anthropological pressure. Polish kings, Lithuanian knights, Russian tsars, Soviet apparatchiks – they knew few restrictions. Today’s officials know none. The preservation is a myth, and these celebrations only help support it! What's reason to create this myth?"
"A facade is instead of Belovezhskaya Pushcha. The forest lost its biological value," agrees Valery Dranchuk, once an editor of the newspaper "Belovezhskaya Pushcha".
Illness and cure
Valery sums up the requirements of independent ecologists: "No felling, whether selective or no. No man-made, artificial wood stands. No hunting, even if the state sees it as a valuable source of hard currency. The forest should be able to live its own life.”
A hunting lodge
Hunting lodges are built nowadays in a modern style.
The forest suffers from large numbers of wild ungulates. The European deer, introduced for royal hunting in the 19th century, is now a destructive animal. At the same time, the bison of Belovezhskaya Pushcha – a symbol of the forest and Belarus – is overwhelmed with illness that locals call as "AIDs for bison".
Ecologists stress the need for action. The core of the problems, they say, is in land reclamation – planned, large-scale and local - in straightening of the creeks and small rivers on any scale, initiated for the sake of hunting. Natural safeguards of the relic forest, impassable wetlands in the South of Belarus dry out as a result.
This century’s safeguard is felling.
Head of the National Park, Nikolai Bambiza explains: "Since 2001, we’ve been at war with bark beetle. You can only save the forest by felling ill trees. That’s what the scientists and field workers here agree on. We don’t need to worry about the stumps. In 10 or 15 years, you would not see them in vegetation."
This astonishes Valery Dranchuk, publicist and ecologist: "The news of bark beetle was leaked when a high-performance saw mill appeared in the National Park. For years now, trucks tug away huge, priceless timber."
Personas non-grata
Valery lost his welcome at the National Park for attempting to photograph the results of the fight with bark beetle and for voicing his objections in the press.
A road in the forest
Kilometers of new roads through the relic forest
His last "deportation" occurred shortly before the current celebrations. Valery arrived to the National Park as a journalist to cover the meeting of painters Belavezha 600. He had an accreditation with the federation of painters, but the security stuff helped him out of the hotel and saw him off outside the perimeter of the National Park.
Valery is not the only one so important. Heorhi Kozulko, once deputy director of science at the National Park, was offered to leave a research-and-practice conference timed to the 600th anniversary. It saddens Heorhi that Belovezhskaya Pushcha is slowly dying as a relic forest and is turning to the ordinary forest. He criticizes the administration of the National Park for the increasing pressure it puts on the forest through growing economic activities and development of mass tourism.
Heorhi says that the regime of secrecy and closed corporation, sometimes like in a military base, is set for independent ecologists in Belovezhskaya Pushcha.
Such views are brushed off by the administration.
"“Speaking frankly, Belovezhskaya Pushcha has no problems. Issues arising in the course of work are monitored by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment Protection, the Academy of Sciences, the government, and the head of state," says Nikolai Bambiza.
European Diploma
In 1997, the National Park earned a European Council Diploma for achievements in nature preservation. The Council suspended the Diploma about a year ago.
Industrial view of the National Park
Valuable timber has been cut in Belovezhskaya Pushcha for centuries
Independent ecologists must have influenced this decision too.
The National Park may have the prestigious award back provided that it has an effective management plan. The plan is now ready. The Academy of Sciences helped create it. After approvals of various bodies and institutions in Belarus, the National Park submitted the plan to an EC Committee for Landscape and Biodiversity
At the same time, Belarus’ Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment Protection drafted an agreement for cooperation with Poland in the trans-boundary specially protected natural areas of the relic forest. The border divides Belovezhskaya Pushcha into Belarusian and Polish parts as 3 to 1.
"We will work with our Polish colleagues closely, we will fulfill all recommendations of the EC and prove that Belovezhskaya Pushcha deserves better international recognition," promises Natalia Minchenko, who is in charge of a special inspection board that the state set up to monitor areas of wilderness.
Public control of the situation must not be restricted, warn independent ecologists.
"This is a really good management plan. It sets objectives that are standard in Europe and the world. If we follow this plan, Belovezhskaya Pushcha can indeed become a better protected forest in 5 years time," says Valery Dranchuk. "However, independent ecologists and general public must be able to control what follows after the declared intentions. The bureaucrat will steal this magnificent forest from us if we are banned from doing that."
Photos by Valery Dranchuk
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