A road for death of Belovezhskaya Pushcha?
By Dmitriy Gerilovich and Rimma Ushkevich, website "Belarusian Green Portal", May 18, 2010
Last week was marked by broad news coverage in mass-media about construction of a new highway which will bypass Belovezhskaya Pushcha. The basic idea which reporters tried to put into heads of ordinary readers lays in the approach that the National Park should make good conditions for the environment and tourism development as maximum as possible. In this connection the new road will be constructing so as not to do harm to the unique ancient forest.
It is well said but the authors of reports and plots have hushed up a "small detail" that the new road is located north of Belovezhskaya Pushcha and it is only a small part of the bypass line. It will actually be constructing in some distance from Pushcha and will not bring very ecological problems for the primeval forest. But the fact is that the other part of the road line already exists along the perimeter of Belovezhskaya Pushcha for a long time and it will be under reconstruction. And exactly this fact has "slipped out" of attention of mass-media. One more fact is that this road passing the Pushcha's border will make the still wild areas of the primordial nature accessible to mass visiting and development of the economic activities.
One more event has taken place a bit earlier. Let's consider it of much smaller scales but to a certain extent not less important for the future of Belovezhskaya Pushcha than the construction of the road. However, by virtue of the existing tradition, it has gone unnoticed by mass-media. The ecologist, independent expert on wildlife conservation and coordinator of the project "Belovezhskaya Pushcha - 21 Century" Heorhi Kazulka has reviewed the overall results of management in the National Park and Belarusian Bialowieza Forest for the last five years. The report is called "Results and general conclusions: what are achievements we reached by the celebration of the 600th anniversary of nature protection in Belovezhskaya Pushcha and what is the future of this woodland". It contains 10 sections, 14 basic conclusions and 17 recommendations. The report has the analysis of almost 100 separate themes and is illustrated with over 3.5 thousand photos. Information about the bypass motorway is also available there.
The report which was planned to presentation last October – by the celebration of the 600th anniversary of protection of Belovezhskaya Pushcha - has taken additional six months for its qualitative completion. PhD of Biology Heorhi Kazilka considers the on-going scenario of development of the National Park as conflicting and even gloomy for the future when it is saying about destruction of the wild nature of the protected relic forest in Belovezhskaya Pushcha, earlier occurred or being still in progress.
The author points to many positive achievements like construction and repair of many different infrastructure on the territory of the National Park, modernization of the village of Kamenyuki (the park's administrative centre) and growth in the number of tourists - about 235 thousand visitors in 2009. He specifies progress in understanding of the core idea and importance of Belovezhskaya Pushcha at the governmental level.
Despite of these positive aspects, in Heorhi Kazilka's opinion, a very strong, dramatic and negative blow-impact upon the wild nature and unique biodiversity of Belovezhskaya Pushcha was done for the last ten years. The author considers that the main problem goes from the dilettanti, non-professional approach and ecological illiteracy of those who today manage the National Park, famous all over Europe. Preparation works for the celebration of the 600th anniversary became one more step to destruct the primordial nature of the National Park. For example, a wild forest in the administrative and tourist center and along tourist routes was transformed into analogy of a city park and a restored wild nature of some part of the Pravaya Lesnaya River valley was "cleaned".
A separate item in the report concerns the analysis of the intensive economic activity and felling operations dangerous for the relic forest and conducted in defiance of the laws and rules of the wildlife management and the ecological science. The report gives scandalous things concerning gross violations of the legislation. They are, for example, a collective hunting for bison in the strictly protected zone or isolation of a large territory of the primeval forest as turning it to a hunting enclosure.
The report focuses attention to the problem of the ecological education and development of the ecological tourism. It is pointed that local guides have a rather low level of the ecological skill. Attempts to transform Belovezhskaya Pushcha into a fantastic area attractive to mass visiting of tourists horrify the scientist. In Heorhi Kazulka's opinion, such manipulations serve the purpose of a worthless entertainment, not a true ecological education for tourists.
So, Belovezhskaya Pushcha became "stumbling-block" between two parties – the state and eco-activists – both interested in the existence of this woodland. But their interests are different. Heorhi Kazulka who shares the line of preservation of the "lost wilderness", points on a number of negative tendencies in the development of the National Park dangerous to the future of Belovezhskaya Pushcha. The tourist infrastructure like a Father Frost's residence and the recreational zone in the core of Pushcha are created to the prejudice of the integrity of the protected woodland. Suspension of a European Diploma for the National Park, a prestigious award given to it in 1997 for nature protection, was the consequence of all violations. And the Park cannot get back the Diploma until now as non-compliance with the Diploma's recommendations.
Expansion of the Wilderness Protection Zone to cover the whole territory of the ancient forest which was announced in October of 2007 by the Belarusian authorities could be the turning point in the history of Belovezhskaya Pushcha. To follow this idea, the whole primeval forest had to be taken under the strict protection, with stopping any economic activity there. The idea was not realized.
Today only 30 percent of the area of the relic forest are under strict protection while the other biggest part is under exploitation by the timber industry, agriculture, hunting, trade and other activities. "Today the National Park "Belovezhskaya Pushcha" is called a national park as only a matter of good word but not as a matter of fact", Heorhi Kazulka writes. "We actually deal with some sort of agro-industry-tourism-forestry-trading complex, not with a national park in the classical understanding of this term and not with a nature protection establishment. This complex is engaged in nature protection, biodiversity conservation, science and ecological education as obligations and works given additionally to the above mentioned economic activities."
To change such sad situation in Belovezhskaya Pushcha is possible only through radical reformation of the system of especially protected natural territories in Belarus as a whole, the coordinator of the project "Belovezhskaya Pushcha - 21 century" writes. His offer lays in creation of a separate state body like State Committee on Especially Protected Natural Territories and Wildlife Conservation.
As to construction of the new bypass road (this should give a new power for development of the tourist business in still little-developed and relatively wild areas), the expert sees it as one more real and serious threat to the primordial and wild nature of Belovezhskaya Pushcha. Heorhi Kazilka does not doubt that, if the present situation will be conserved in the National Park and the wrong policy and management will further be carried out in the near future, the road will bring a powerful and irreparable impact for the Pushcha's relic forest in the areas where access for economic operations was earlier limiting for the natural reasons. "The management process still develops in the old way and everything goes to get this kind of scenario. Urgent and radical changes are necessary virtually in all fields that to prevent the critical development and to correct the existing negative ecological and social situation in Belovezhskaya Pushcha. First of all, expansion of the Wilderness Protection Zone to cover the almost entire area of the primeval, relic forest is to be done. Only in this approach is possible to expect that the start point of the establishing the reserved status will begin in Belovezhskaya Pushcha!"
Read about specific measures on protection and development in the Belarusian National Park here (in Russian).
Write Your opinion / comment / idea to the Website's Forum