Belovezhskaya Pushcha: a quiet untouched wood in the Polish part, a wood disturbed by honking timber lorries on the Belarusian side
Nickolai SKOBLA, "Belarusian Radio Liberty Life", February 6, 2005
Our guests are Valery Dranchuk, and Heorhi Kazulka by phone
I recently visited Belovezhskaya Pushcha in both Polish and the Belarusian parts which are divided by the state border. In Poland, in the vicinity of Hajnowka I found an untouched wood and silence, like in outer space, whereas timber lorries honk in the Belarusian part of Pushcha. An employee of the entrance check post located in the village of Kamenyuki very quickly managed to open the gate and take note of how much timber was taken out. I felt anguish and great discomfort watching this. Since when did Belovezhskaya Pushcha turn into a large timber harvesting area? With this question I would like to start our conversation with the editor of "Belovezhskaya Pushcha" newspaper and leader of the public ecological initiative "TERRA-Convention", Valery Dranchuk.
(Valery Dranchuk:) "These impressions are not new for me. Sad thoughts overwhelmed me after visiting Belovezhskaya Pushcha over last years. This "chaos" from Belovezhskaya Pushcha started long time ago and it is not known when it will end. To my disappointment I don't see any light ahead."
(Nickolai Skobla:) "Let's not start our conversation with such a pessimistic tone. The question that comes to me is whether Europe and UNESCO consider the Belovezhskaya Pushcha as two separate areas or not? The first part would be the Polish area, Biosphere Reserve and the oldest forest on the continent and the second is the Belarusian one, where uncontrolled processes are going on? "
(Mr Dranchuk:) "I do not know of such threat because Europe has shown and will show interest in improving the situation in the Belarusian part of Belovezhskaya Pushcha. The other thing is how much society promotes this interest. When I come to Belovezhskaya Pushcha I face barriers everywhere. They do not allow me to enter, pursue me, detain and deliver me to a frontier guard post. Thus, I as a journalist cannot work today in Belovezhskaya Pushcha. I cannot monitor the situation there to make comparisons like you just made now.
The Council of Europe awarded Belovezhskaya Pushcha the European Diploma in 1997. I can say today that Belarus does not follow rules and recommendations of the Diploma though this is quite wise document by the way. The Council of Europe stimulates nature protection activities, but Belarus does not demonstrate it undertakes such activity in regard to Belovezhskaya Pushcha's area. What is the current situation there? Intensive exploitation is going on in the woods of Belovezhskaya Pushcha and there is no point to talk about humanitarian treatment towards the protected area. Any truth, any fact that reveals the tracks of crimes the nomenclature commit in Belovezhskaya Pushcha, is being hidden".
(Mr Skobla:) "It sounds rather ridiculous - exploitation of a wood. Being at the entrance check post and looking at the heavy and muddy timber lorries, I tried to make some conversation with an employee of this post. But from his laconic answers only two things stood out: 1) we all are civil servants who carry out orders; 2) only dead wood (this is about 200,000 cubic meters) is taken out of the woods. So according to his words, not the woodcutters but the forest sanitary attendants rule over Pushcha's wood. How do you comment on this? "
(Mr Dranchuk:) "Local managers, counting these cubic meters, bring up very often this quantitative approach on press conferences etc. But we have to operate more with qualitative approaches. What kind of relation do cubic meters, timber harvest volumes, wood remnants etc. have with the Belovezhskaya Pushcha as a World Biosphere Reserve and World Heritage Site? These should be criteria. The international conventions like the Convention on biological diversity and the Parisian convention on World Natural Heritage signed by our country must be implemented. Some more documents and regulations on which this protected area is based can be named. However when judging, the quantitative approach is imposed on us: how much felled wood, how much planted. This is all aimed at perplexing the public opinion.
I recently talked with an interesting man, so-called forest engineer who caries out field inventory jobs, and I asked him - did you see the robbery going on in the forest, of which we heard so much about? He confirmed - yes, pine trees in two girths, which are the natural wood gene fund, are being cut down! They are cut down, portioned, packed and transported in an unknown direction. Therefore we should bring out the truth which the nomenclature from the scientific world and government hide. No matter what things they have to declare they are always restrained."
(Mr Skobla:) "Belovezhskaya Pushcha is a unique natural monument that should be protected and studied. I want to ask you how many research employees work in the National Park today? Heorhi Kazulka, the former deputy director on science of the National Park, who lives in the village of Kamenyuki, speaks".
(Heorhi Kazulka:) "Since the Park area was enlarged last summer the number of employees is about 1,700. About twenty of them deal with science, and among them there are only two Philosophy Doctors working: one is a pensioner, the other is near retirement age. Seven or eight researches are very young people. There is a saying: if scientists are all old, it's a tragedy; if they are all young - it's a comedy. The current situation in the scientific department of the National Park is both tragic and comic in the same time."
(Mr Skobla:) "Do you know the situation of the scientific staff in the Polish part of the Pushcha?"
(Mr Kazulka:) "Our Polish neighbours that own half of Bialowieza are studying it. With the exception of the small scientific department of the National Park, three very powerful research institutes are situated within the Polish Bialowieza nowadays: The Geo-botanical Station, The Mammal Research Institute and the Forest Institute. Together they employ about a hundred workers. We can count two Academicians, seven or eight Professors and about twenty Philosophy Doctors as employees on the Polish side".
(Mr Skobla:) "Mister Kazulka, Euro-Parliament recently granted 100,000 dollars to Belovezhskaya Pushcha. In your opinion, what could be the most efficient way to spend this money?"
(Mr Kazulka:) "The answer is very easy. The most efficient way to spend this money is on conservation, development of a scientific base, on promoting tourism and on ecological education. However we already remember a similar and sad experience. GEF (the Global Ecological Fund) allocated one million dollars to Belovezhskaya Pushcha in the early 1990's. But what was the result? The donated funds had a very little effect. Where is our problem? If nonprofessional people will manage this grant again, we will have the same result. The activities that have taken place in the National Park in the last seven - eight years show that nothing will be changed if the management system of the Park will be kept in place. Those who manage the Park today are not interested in change because they personally benefit from such management. What do we see today? A man with an independent opinion, though skilled and qualified, is fired from the Park in just a few hours!"
(Mr Skobla:) "It is a sad situation . When I listened to Heorhi Kazulka, I recollected an episode from "Confession" by Larissa Geniush. Two teenagers went to a wood. One looked at a high pine tree and said "Masts, mast" while the second - "Coal, coal". The first one became a sailor while the second - a smith. The same thing happens in the Pushcha: the President's Property Management Department went in the Pushcha and saw timber stacks and thought they would make good sales. Is there any reason for this economic structure to change its treatment towards the Pushcha? "
(Mr Dranchuk:) "No reason. Moreover, this ugly management system becomes firmly established and is growing in power. You see, hundreds are being dismissed in the Park! It is a serious social problem. But neither OSCE nor the UN office see this problem, though hundreds of people from Belovezhskaya Pushcha appealed these bodies".
(Mr Skobla:) "Let's talk about the inhabitants of Belovezhskaya Pushcha. Not about spacious zoo enclosures or about sad behavior of bison, but about the sand-bathing these mighty and huge animals like. this shocked me. Is sand-bathing a normal behavior for bison?"
(Dranchuk:) "It is difficult to say, consultation of the bison experts is necessary, but I think that such behavior is not typical for bison. A very dear to me local, Vladimir Datskevich, once told me that a man who knows and likes nature will always protest against enclosures. This is a tragedy, especially for children coming on school trips, to first get acquainted with Belovezhskaya Pushcha by visiting the enclosures. An enclosure is not nature. Bison in the natural environment and bison in enclosures, these are two very different things.
I recently heard a broadcast with the participation of Michael Nikiforov, director of the Zoology Institute within the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus. He emphasized the idea that "Belovezhskaya Pushcha was restricted to the public for a long time and now we are opening it". However, opening Pushcha to the people requires skilled creativity and involvement of erudite, not indifferent people. But there are no such people among the Park's managers. Those who came to profit from Pushcha, the "smart sawyers" as I like to call them have occupied the Park. All their activity is limited to logging, to sales and to earning good money. This is the main task given by the Property Management Department and its lobby. Nature protection has no place in the Pushcha anymore. That's the alarm we have to raise."
(Mr Skobla:) "Let's continue the bison topic. A 10-meter high bison monument has recently been erected along the Brest - Moscow road. In you opinion, what should this monument say to everyone who passes by? "
(Mr Dranchuk:) "Generally, our civilization passes by nature just like people pass by the bison monument near Baranovichi. Drivers just look and drive past. And what did you think with this? The aesthetic performance of this monument leaves much to be wish desired. A good location has been found. The monument has been erected on a high hill, it is visible from 7 - 8 kilometers, looking like a small point but still visible. The image of the monument though is not so successful. On the other hand we have to be nice to the bison if we choose it as a symbol. We see it seldom on stamps and envelopes. When I see bison I think about its sick population. I see the very unsatisfactory conditions bisons live in. Belovezhskaya Pushcha became tin in growth, spruce stands are disappeared. What is the future of the Pushcha? This dramatic question doesn't have a scientific answer".
(Mr Skobla:) "While I was slowly walking along the enclosures, several cars of foreign production passed by me very fast. Then I found a small grass-snake squashed by wheels on the asphalt".
(Mr Dranchuk:) "By the way, this was your first lesson on absence of ethics. In Belovezhskaya Pushcha sandy roads have been covered with asphalt - this is the first lesson on anti-ethics. The incident you witnessed is the other awful lesson. The so-called Grandfather Frost's residence was constructed in the midst of the forest. As a result, big buses with children run across the reserved wood covering a distance of fourteen kilometers. A driver sees bison and shouts - look, bison there. Bisons run away in all directions, under the laughs of the tourists. This is an example of ethics in Belovezhskaya Pushcha. This is the level of nature protection! Therefore the Euro-Parliament should know whom they grant money to. Mister Kazulka is right talking about inefficient capital investment. Europe should keep up with those who carry out the planned jobs".
(Mr Skobla:) "Right. But if we look at history, we are tempted to say: prince Jagiello hunted in the Pushcha, then the Russian tsars, then the Communist Party General Secretaries Brezhnev and Masherov. And our owners think today - why are we worse? "
(Dranchuk:) "I agree that there is such a temptation. People don't cycle in the Pushcha. By the way, when I came to the Park, I was forced to park my bicycle, while the nomenclature in foreign cars was allowed to enter, to fish and hunt in the Pushcha. But that is a stereotype regarding the authorities, and the public should struggle against it. The public therefore has not been given opportunities to struggle and to be present in Belovezhskaya Pushcha, because authorities want to conserve these stereotypes and to further reign over the Pushcha like over a private estate. And they do it! Moreover, they also develop the appropriate infrastructures for their private needs. Without the public supervision, there will never be order in the Pushcha.
This is why our ecological initiative "TERRA-Convention" proposes creation of a Supervising Public Council in Belovezhskaya Pushcha. We addressed these proposals both to the Council of Europe and the Euro-Parliament. Someone should make examination on what is being done and what being built in the National Park. They started to change the water regime in Pushcha's area, new water reservoirs appeared, but what are the effects on the environment? We just do not know why this is being done. Today the authorities say one thing, do the second and aim at the third. We witness a phenomenon of very dangerous authority and dangerous management within the reserved area. I wrote this in the recently published book "Belovezhskaya Pushcha: the Resolution SOS".
(Mr Skobla:) "After reading your chronicle of struggle I found out why many of your colleagues, as for example Academician Victor Parfenov have lost hope for Pushcha's protection - because of this catastrophic situation. Maybe it should draw attention to other ways until the Supervisory Council will be created? A machine gun as a monument is set on a pedestal nearby the Park's entrance. Not a model, a real one. So can it be. "
(Mr Dranchuk:) "I thank you for this joke. [Laughs] Clearly, it would be desirable sometimes to turn this machine gun towards the Park's administration. But I as a journalist would prefer to "create" shots. My book is also shot of publicity and truth. When I wanted to present the book to the Park's library, the deputy director on science Anna Dengubenko told me - only with the director's sanction in written form! It's absurd, isn't it? The local "smart sawyers" are afraid of shots of publicity most of all. As for the machine gun . Although this is not its place I would not touch it for the moment. The most effective weapon is the word of truth".