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.”
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not