May 13, 2022

Poland is ruining the Belavezha Forest. Poland decided to fence itself off from Belarus with a wall. The concrete fencing is already 50 kilometres long. In June, they are going to triple this length. Dividing the only relict forest in Europe into two parts, the wall also runs through specially protected natural areas. Animals are becoming hostages of political games and ambitions. Experts believe that this wall can cause an environmental disaster.

 The Polish officials do this exercise fundamentally: steel reinforcement is poured with concrete, in between – protection from under-digging half a meter into the ground and the same amount above it. Lattice sections of thick galvanized rods and "yegoza" – a barbed wire to be wound around the top, are ready to be installed. Piles three times the height of a man are already in place – just behind the conventional line separating Poland and Belarus.

 "The work is currently in process, it is being carried out very actively. There is constant movement of construction equipment along the border line, building materials are delivered. The barrier fence has already been erected in some areas, preparations are underway or have already been completed in some areas," says Nadezhda Masevich, an official representative of the Grodno Border Group.

 Until March, Warsaw generally forbade entry into the border area, and there are still armed military men on the other side. Polish border guards have just reported: they managed to complete 50 kilometres of the wall in three months, and they are planning to completed 186 more km by June. The round–the-clock roar of bulldozers and the light of searchlights scares away the animals, and from the drone aircraft one can see the barbarously dug border - like a scar near the forest itself. Soil degradation, bashing of unique tree species – they calculated in Belarus how much this Polish environmental vandalism has already cost.

 On this side, the damage from construction is estimated at 19 million US Dollars, on the other side, Poles are ready to bury up to 400 million USD in the ground. And no one thinks of the price the nature will have to pay for this.

 There are dozens of specially protected nature conservation areas and hunting grounds along the border. But the main thing is that Warsaw is forcefully killing the Belavezha Forest, the last relic forest in Europe, where there are more than 20 thousand species of flora and fauna, including those, included in the Red Books. Poland is trying to block the migration routes not for people, but for animals. The murderous fencing is a matter of their life and death.

 "Along the 186 kilometers, only 22 "windows" to be left for animal migration, that is, a bison or an elk should come up and think which way to move. This is far being sufficient, unacceptably insufficient within the framework of such a fundamental structure," Alexander Karevsky, Dean of the Faculty of Biology and Ecology of the Yanka Kupala GrSU, comments on the situation.

 The Yanka Kupala Grodno University scientists have sent letters to the Council of Europe and UNESCO, because the Forest is the only natural World Heritage site in Belarus and, which looks especially cynical, in Poland itself. By driving piles into the ground, Warsaw gives a blow at the ecosystem of the entire of Europe, violates its own legislation, the Berne Wildlife Protection Convention. Both Polish and Belarus scholars have required the European Commission to ban the construction. More than a thousand of their colleagues from 24 countries expressed their support in this. But ecology appeared to be held in hostage by the official Warsaw authorities.

"This is the absurdity of the Polish authorities and an absolutely narrow-minded policy. Here Warsaw showed political short-sightedness. UNESCO is doing nothing about this. There were appeals, signatures were collected – and there was zero reaction," said Rashid Ismailov, chairman of the Russian Ecological Society.

Since the beginning of construction, the deer population has halved. Where they haven't managed to build the wall yet, the Poles have wound the Bruno spiral – a deadly trap that is already killing elks and bison. And they are firm to complete the construction. And to cause the environmental catastrophe.

Greenpeace, UNESCO, the European Union remain silent.

Sources:

https://www.vesti.ru/article/2738175

https://smotrim.ru/video/2410272

Translated in English by Mukhiddin Ganiev