Last three years of no benefits for wildlife in Bialowieza
Posted by Lesza dla Puszczy, Website "Bialowieza-Forest.Blogspot", February 26, 2010
The Bialowieza Forest is the last preserved forest complex of the old Lithuanian woods – the last forest in Europe which has retained its primeval features. Only a fragment (150,000 ha) of the once huge forest region has remained until the present day, with 62,500 ha at the Polish side. Less than 17% of the area is protected by the Bialowieza National Park and another 7% – the size of the Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport – has UNESCO World Heritage Site status. The forest is cut through with a road to Bialowieza and to the Belarussian border checkpoint and – temporarily – with an unused railway line. The town of Bialowieza, located in the heart of the primeval forest, near the Eastern EU border, is being developed into a large tourist and business center. Forest meadows are being gradually built up, woodlands intersected with increasingly busy roads. It is impossible to predict how long this forest sanctuary of Europe will survive.
2010 February. Last three years of no benefits for wildlife in Bialowieza
Three years ago the Presidential Office established an expert group which would prepare a project on enlarging the national park. A year ago, there was hope that it would be realized. Then another, smaller group was established for a similar project, which met only once.
Shortly afterward, at the end of 2008 the Minister of Environment asked the general director of the Forestry Service to establish yet another group to resolve the regional problems of Bialowieza Forest. This group, composed mainly of foresters, one person of Presidential expert group and one member of the Presidential Office, had only a few months to enact their project.
At the same time, NGOs asked the Park Director to ask the Minister to enlarge the buffer zone of the national park to create an area where hunting would be prohibited. The request was rejected because, according to Polish law, such a zone can only be established with a new law for the whole park, which is a long, arduous process.
At the end of September 2008 a popular Polish daily announced that very close to the Bialowieza forest, local authorities from Narewka sold 25 hectares to build an oil storage facility for the Russian company, Lukoil. Local ecologists and NGOs began working against this project. It is well known that the area is rife with bison and lynx. In November the media announced that because of the problems with ecologists, Lukoil resigned from the project. But we are still engaged in monitoring the potential project because the resignation was suspicious.
At the end of October 2008 Bialowieza was visited by representatives from UNESCO World Heritage. During the discussion with foresters, NGOs and scientists, the NGOs showed that, only in the last month, the foresters had logged in places with some species protected within the EU. It became evident that the present management is a threat to the forest itself.
In October 2008 Polish media informed that hunters are still hunting in the park’s buffer zone and on the day TV reporters visited the forest, foresters from the park found a deer that had been shot within the national park. The foresters from the forestry said that the hunter was their own officer. Shown on Polish TV and media in general, this event exposed the problem to the public. A month later, the expert group established by the foresters, completed their project. They proposed different models, but nothing involving enlargement of the national park. Their program focused on the creation of new offices for better propaganda on forest management.
In the last days of December 2008, the Bialowieza Council – comprised of a handful of foresters themselves – produced a statement that the management of Bialowieza Forest should be in the hands of the foresters. In the statement, they wrote that the old and dying trees look very bad and are a danger to local inhabitants and tourists.
The Minister didn’t take into account the forestry group’s results. At the press conference in mid-January 2009 he told the journalists that he decided to enlarge the national park. Two of the three current districts of the park, Bialowieza and part of Browsk, are to be combined into the national park, tripling its size. Half of the Polish part of Bialowieza Forest would be in the national park. However, Polish law says that local councils should agree in order to make this type of change. All local councils and authorities – comprised largely of foresters – are against the Minister’s decision. In December 2009 minister resigned. The local councils agreed to enlarge the park, but only for about 10% (mainly existing reserves) if they receive about 100 million zloty (ca 33 million USD) as a compensation.
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