The roar of a chainsaw and staccato blows of an axe break the silence deep in Poland’s majestic Bialowieza forest as loggers swiftly fell a 90-year-old tree.
Teeming with wildlife, Bialowieza, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, includes one of the largest surviving parts of the primeval forest that covered the European plain 10,000 years ago.
However, today, this peaceful haven is the scene of a bitter battle between environmentalists and officials over a spruce bark beetle infestation that rangers say is damaging healthy trees.
Photo: Reuters
There is no denying spruce bark beetles are having a field day in the forest, also home to the continent’s largest mammal, the European bison, as well as elk, wolves and lynx.
The wood of a logged spruce reveals a spectacular network of tunnels created by the insects.
“When their population gets as huge as it is now, the beetles are no longer content just to finish off diseased spruce. They also attack healthy trees,” forest ranger Andrzej Antczak said.
Authorities insist the goal of the tree felling is to stop the degradation of the treasured woodland.
However, environmentalists and many scientists say the beetle poses no threat and that officials are more interested in selling wood than protecting the forest.
Spruce trees make up about 30 percent of Bialowieza and rangers say that beetles have attacked about a fifth of them, translating into about 1 million cubic meters of lumber.
Each infected tree threatens up to 30 of its neighbors. And warmer weather means that up to five generations of beetles can reproduce over a year. Cutting a single infested tree and removing it, can “save 1 to 2 hectares of forest per year,” said Grzegorz Bielecki, head forest ranger at Bialowieza.
Over the centuries, Bialowieza has been spared the loggers by Polish kings and Russian czars who treasured it as the perfect hunting ground brimming with large game.
The forest also survived massive clear-cut logging — when all is felled down to the stem — in the 20th century by Russian and German occupiers, British industrialists and communist authorities.
Sprawling over 150,000 hectares, Bialowieza reaches across the Polish border with Belarus, where it is entirely protected as a nature park, compared with only about 16 percent of the Polish part of the forest.
“Green” activists say that the entire Polish part of the forest should be designated as a nature park, meaning logging would be forbidden.
However, since it was elected in October last year, the controversial Law and Justice (PiS) government has said it plans to harvest more than 180,000m3 of wood over a decade — triple the amount approved by the previous liberal government.
The PiS says new trees outnumber ones that are being chopped down and that protected virgin woodlands will not be logged.
The governing conservatives claim logging will protect the forest from beetles and people from being hit by weakened, falling spruce.
However, some environmentalists accuse rangers of altering the forest’s unique ecosystem, which has been described by UNESCO as “an irreplaceable area for biodiversity conservation.”
A coalition of environmental organizations, including Greenpeace and the Polish branch of the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), has lodged a complaint with the European Commission over the logging.
The EU has also said it is “concerned” by Warsaw’s decisions to log in Bialowieza and a UNESCO delegation visiting Poland from yesterday to Wednesday.
Science professor Rafal Kowalczyk said he opposes the felling, believing the beetle-ravaged trees should be allowed to die naturally and become a habitat for new flora and fauna.
“The trees around me look dead, but in reality they’re brimming with life, even more so than when they were growing, because now they’re home to hundreds of insect species,” Kowalczyk said, standing in part of the forest where trees fell victim to beetles.
“A dead tree is a wealth of biodiversity,” added the director of an outpost of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Bialowieza. “To cut down trees in this forest is comparable to what the Taliban does when it destroys works of art.”
SUPPORT: Elon Musk’s backing for the far-right AfD is also an implicit rebuke of center-right Christian Democratic Union leader Friedrich Merz, who is leading polls German Chancellor Olaf Scholz took a swipe at Elon Musk over his political judgement, escalating a spat between the German government and the world’s richest person. Scholz, speaking to reporters in Berlin on Friday, was asked about a post Musk made on his X platform earlier the same day asserting that only the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party “can save Germany.” “We have freedom of speech, and that also applies to multi-billionaires,” Scholz said alongside Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal. “But freedom of speech also means that you can say things that are not right and do not contain
Two US Navy pilots were shot down yesterday over the Red Sea in an apparent “friendly fire” incident, the US military said, marking the most serious incident to threaten troops in over a year of US targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Both pilots were recovered alive after ejecting from their stricken aircraft, with one sustaining minor injuries. However, the shootdown underlines just how dangerous the Red Sea corridor has become over the ongoing attacks on shipping by the Iranian-backed Houthis despite US and European military coalitions patrolling the area. The US military had conducted airstrikes targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels at the
MILITANTS TARGETED: The US said its forces had killed an IS leader in Deir Ezzor, as it increased its activities in the region following al-Assad’s overthrow Washington is scrapping a long-standing reward for the arrest of Syria’s new leader, a senior US diplomat said on Friday following “positive messages” from a first meeting that included a promise to fight terrorism. Barbara Leaf, Washington’s top diplomat for the Middle East, made the comments after her meeting with Ahmed al-Sharaa in Damascus — the first formal mission to Syria’s capital by US diplomats since the early days of Syria’s civil war. The lightning offensive that toppled former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad on Dec. 8 was led by the Muslim Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is rooted in al-Qaeda’s
Pulled from the mud as an infant after the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 and reunited with his parents following an emotional court battle, the boy once known as “Baby 81” is now a 20-year-old dreaming of higher education. Jayarasa Abilash’s story symbolized that of the families torn apart by one of the worst natural calamities in modern history, but it also offered hope. More than 35,000 people in Sri Lanka were killed, with others missing. The two-month-old was washed away by the tsunami in eastern Sri Lanka and found some distance from home by rescuers. At the hospital, he was
RSS