Nature knows no political boundaries and maps cannot stop forests. But barbed wires can prevent animals from roaming in their natural habitat. Is it time for Forests Sans Frontieres

1. Forest Sans Frontiers
Inspired by
Prepared by
Bajinder Pal Singh, GEM (Erasmus)

2. Photo courtesy: EurAtlas

3. Photo courtesy: EurAtlas

4. Photo courtesy: EurAtlas

5. A look at forests in Poland

6. Geological factors
 Poland is placed on
contact point of
Europe’s tectonic
plates:



Precambrian east
European
mid-European,
Palaeozoic
formations
younger alpine
systems [Gilewska
1991].

7. 2 case studies:
NorthEast and SouthWest
 North-East:
 Edge of the ancient monolithic east European plate
 Crystalline foundation dips very steeply covered in
places by a layer of sedimentary rocks
 Sedimentary rocks are only a few centimetres thick.
 South-West



Varied west European Palaeozoic structures
Crystalline foundation is extremely deep
Sedimentary rocks several kilometres thick.

8. A
1 forest : 2 countries
Because nature knows no
political boundaries

9. A
1 forest : 2 countries
Białowieża Primaeval Forest
Poland
Belarus
Białowieska
Belaveskaya
Pushcha
National Park
Biosphere
Reserve
100 km²
1,771 km²

10. A
Białowieska:transboundary reserve
HISTORY
 The oldest national Park in Poland started in 1921
 Hunting ground of Lithuanian princes, Polish kings
and Russian Czars
 Until World War II: the forest was located entirely
within Poland. Then borders were redrawn.
 Bialowieza National Park was granted the status of
World Biosphere Reserve in 1977 and World
Heritage Site in 1979.
 Since 1994 the forests of Bialowieza other than the
National Park have been granted the status of
Promotional Forest Complex "Bialowieza Forest".

11. A
Animal kingdom: Bialowieza
 It is a part of the oldest existing European forest and the sanctuary of
the virtually extinct European bison, or wisent.
 70 mammal species, including deer, fox, wild pig, wolves, and the
common squirrel.
 280 bird species, including doves, kestrels, wrens, bullfinches, and
woodpeckers.
 Forests contain grass snakes and vipers, while rivers are the habitat of
fur-bearing animals such as mink and otter.
Endangered animals.
 Lynx [Lynx Lynx].
 Deer [Capreolus Capreolus].
 Moose [Alces Alces].
 Brown Bear [Ursus Arctos].

12. A
The Bison (Bison bonasus)
 The B&B bison, Europe's largest herbivore in Europe.
once ranged throughout much of Europe.
 “Lithuanian Statutes”: declared by Polish King
Sigismund the Old in 1553.
 The death penalty was imposed for killing European
bison by Sigismund August (1520–1572).

13. A
The Bison (Bison bonasus)
1 Geographical
range of
genus Bison
2 Probable
range
3 Range
unknown
4 Sites of
discovery
5 Routes’ of
bison
migration in
Pliocene
and
Pleistocene
6 Range of
Bison
bonansus in
Holocene
and early
historical
times
Source: Zdzisaw Pucek, 2002, Status Survey and Conservation Action Plan:European Bison, IUCN

14. A
The Bison (Bison bonasus)
Disappearance
England
12th century
France
14th century
Germany
18th century
B&B forest
1919

15. A
The Bison : Good News
 Bison was successfully reintroduced in the forest.
 The animals that survive today are descendants of a
handful of animals that had been bred in captivity in
German and Scandinavian zoos.
 There is differing opinion by some taxonomists, but
most scientists consider the B&B bison, also called the
Lithuanian bison, to be a different species to American
bison.

16. A
The Bison : Good News
Source: Zdzisaw Pucek, 2002, Status Survey and Conservation Action Plan:European Bison, IUCN

17. A
The Bison : Bad News
 The Lithuanian bison, the form found in B&B, is one
of two sub-species; the other is the now-extinct
Caucasian bison.
 Two herds of rare European bison range in protected
areas along the border of Poland and Belarus.

18. A
The Bison : Bad News

19. A
The Bison : Bad News

20. A
The Bison : Bad News
A 2 ½ meter high metal fence prevents bisons
from moving between Poland and Belarus

21. A
The Bison : Bad News
A 2 ½ meter high metal fence separates PolandBelarus
•Imagine telling bison to get a passport and a visa!

22. A
The Bison & the fence
 A ten meter wide dirt security road, patrolled
by guards, slices the forest.
 The fence was created in 1981, when
Belarus, then part of the Soviet Union,
following the beginning of the Solidarity
movement in Poland.

23. A
The Bison & the fence
Demographically stable, with low risk of genetic variability losses in 100 years
Location
Initial
1970
1980
1990
2000
Poland
28
197
242
272
306
Belarus
41
63
`69
315
265
Poland*
15
7
60
66
60
* Populations functioning at risk to the loss of genetic variability
Source: Zdzisaw Pucek, 2002, Status Survey and Conservation Action Plan:European Bison, IUCN

24. A

25. A

26. A

27. A

28. A

30. A Importance of Belovezhskaya
end of Cold War
Leonid Kravchuk, Stanislau Shushkevich, and Boris Yeltsin
(left to right), the three signatories of the Belavezha Agreement

31. A
Problems know no political
boundaries
Air pollution
Impact of tourism
Trampling (vegetation and soil damage)
Introduction of alien invasive species
Railway line near by that carries harmful chemicals and the
disturbance of water regimes by land reclamation in contiguous
Belarus forests, to create a reservoir on the Narew River some
12.5km from the park.
 Commercial logging is allowed in the surrounding forest
complex, and there are fears that the remaining old-growth
stands will have disappeared within the next ten years.






32. A
Hope for the future
 Conservationists hope that the Bialowieza National
Park on the Polish side, and the Belovezhskaya
National Park on the Belarus side (B&B for short), will
become an international peace park

33. B
1 forest : 2 countries
Western Sudety Mountains
 The Krkonose/Karkonosze Mountains are
part of the Sudetes in north-east Bohemia, a
mountain system shared by the Czech
Republic, Poland and Germany.
 Known as “Kingdom of the Spirit of the
Mountains”

34. B
1 forest : 2 countries
Western Sudety Mountains
 The area is known for its high biodiversity in four
altitudinal vegetation belts, from submontane to
alpine.
Country
Poland
Czech
Name of National Karkonosze
Park
National Park
Krkonoše National
Park
Population
70
26,700 *
Vegetation
Forests
Meadows
Infrastructure
Lesser Infrastructure
Sports, Tourism
Tourists
2.5 - 3 million
6 - 8 million *
* 2002 figures

35. B
Geological factors
 The Karkonosze Mountains are situated on
the division of the European water system
 It divides the basins of two rivers
Elbe
 Oder
Which means that it separates the basins of the
 Baltic Sea, and
 North Sea


36. B
Sudety: symbol of cooperation
Czech-Polish Biosphere Reserve Bilateral Board
 9 working groups on various topics (e.g.
nature conservation, tourism, forestry, local
communities), under an umbrella of the
Czech-Polish Biosphere Reserve Bilateral
Board, have been set up in order to provide a
forum of communication between the
decision-makers of the cross-border region,
local stakeholders and experts.

37. B
Various activities under joint board
1.
2.
Impact of air pollution on montane, subalpine and alpine
ecosystems (Czech/Poland)
Air and water quality, pedology, pedobiology, hydrology,
hydrobiology, forestry, botany, entomology, vertebratology
(Czech/Poland)
3.
Forest and agricultural management in the mountain areas
4.
5.
6.
Meteorology, climate and geology (Czech/Poland)
Flora and Fauna (Czech/Poland)
Standardising methods of the main species and ecosystem
protection (Czech/Poland)
Limit the influence of introduced and invasive species
7.
(Czech/Poland)
(Czech/Poland)

38. B
Stake holders
 Private forest owners: Czech republic. Associations
are often office bearers
 Other organisations: Poland – support of Roman
Catholic Church was regarded as important
 Czech:participation by hunting organisations is
necessary because they have high populations of
herbivores in forests
 Reference: IUCN: biodiversity in forests survey 2002, Francesca
Romano & Edward T. Idle

39. B
Example of cooperation: Sudety mountains
and Black Triangle

40. B
Changes in Black Triangle
http://www.grid.unep.ch/activities/global_change/blacktriangle/bt_schema.jpg

41. B

42. B
http://na.unep.net/digital_atlas2/webatlas.php?id=7

43. B
Decline in emissions in Black Triangle
Source: Abraham J et al. 2000, Common Report on Air Quality in the Black Triangle Region

44. 1 Nation: 2 Forests
Countries
Poland-Belarus
Poland-Czech
Case Studies
Case A
Case B
Results
Lack of
adequate
cooperation
Good
cooperation
Case B shows that “National boundaries need not be barriers”

45. Issue is environmental, but
 Factors include
Legal
 Economic
 Scientific
 Political, social, cultural etc


46. Another solution: Euroregions
 Apart from bilateral
 Euroregions are: strengthening neighbour contacts,
developing infrastructure, economic co-operation,
environment protection, tourism as well as cultural
and educational activities.
 The Euroregions include the



Pomerania (Poland, Germany, Sweden)
Nysa (Poland, Czech Republic, Germany)
Carpathian regions (Poland, Ukraine, Hungary,
Slovakia, Romania).
 Natura 2000

47. Other countries
Peace Parks Foundation
 Peace Parks Foundation: Seeks to create a series of
trans-frontier peace parks in Southern Africa.
 One of projects: a vast peace park linking
 Kruger National Park on the South African side
 Banhine and Zinave National Parks in Mozambique.

Together with the contiguous Gonarezhou National
Park in Zimbabwe, the proposed conservation area will
be about five times the current size of Kruger, itself the
size of New Jersey.

48. Other countries
Peace Parks Foundation
 An 80-kilometer electric "fence of fire"
separated the no-man's land between
Mozambique and South Africa.
 Since its construction in the mid-1980s, some
100 people have died attempting to cross the
barrier, more than the number killed trying to
cross the Berlin Wall.

49. Globally
 IUCN's World Conservation Monitoring
Centre has identified 136 trans-frontier
protected area complexes distributed among
98 countries.

50. Poland is known as….
Norman Davies called Poland
“God’s Playground”

51. Can Poland set an example for the world

52. History is in Poland’s side
 Poland was an architect of the peace park
concept, which began with the Crakow (now
Krakow) protocol of 1924 in which twin
national parks were established along the
then-disputed borders of Czechoslovakia and
Poland.

53. Belovezhskaya Pushcha in folk culture
 The forest is the subject of a famous Russian ballad,
"Belovezhskaya Pushcha", composed in 1975 by
Aleksandra Pakhmutova, with lyrics by Nikolai
Dobronravov.
“Here is our long-forgotten family home.
And, having heard now and then the voice of
ancestors calling,
Like a grey little forest bird, from far-away
centuries,
I fly to you, Belovezhskaya Pushcha”.

54. Addendum – Additional Slides

55. Climatic factors
 Humid air from the Atlantic meets dry air originating in the east.
This creates a rapid movement of barometric high and low
pressures and a resultant changeability in weather systems.
 Eastern Poland:
 Climate is more continental
 Winters are severer
 Snow cover lasts longer
 Temperature range is greater
 Growing period is shorter.
 Southern Poland
 Climate is entirely different from the rest of the country
 Vertical zones caused by the drop in air temperature at high
altitudes.

56. Vegetation cover in Poland
 Distinction between west and east (as the climate
becomes more continental)
 Distinction between north and south (corresponding
with the parallel layering of the landscape zones)
 Vegetation varies according to whether Atlantic or
continental influences dominate - with even some
Pontic-Panon elements.
 As you move east, lowland sub-continental mixed
pine-oak and sub-boreal spruce forests become more
common (with Eurasian features being especially
prominent in the far north-east), while the lowland
beech woods and acidophilous oakwoods
characteristic of western Poland gradually disappear.

57. Climatic factors
 High soil moisture
 High atmospheric moisture
 Rocks are erodible – greater shallow soil

58. Animal kingdom
 There are about 100 species of birds
Lower levels: 100 varieties
 Peaks : 10 varieties.

 The park has 4 species of fish,
 6 species of amphibians
 5 species of reptiles
 The park's attraction are mouflons, brought
here at the beginning of the 20th century.