Białowieża National Park in Poland

And nowhere in that quote you give on needs of the forest does it mention bark beetles. Nowhere.

You seem to think 'forest management' means 'doing something'. Not true, there is a forest management system called 'non-intervention' (or variations on that wording). It means leaving the forest alone as a management strategy. Look it up.

And nowhere do you acknowledge the fact that under the PO regime, 90% of the 10 year max was harvested in 3 years... but that doesn't really matter anyway...

I didn't mention beetles because I don't care. I care more about people's incomes, wellbeing, and need for firewood than beetles. Besides, they'll surely survive considering than 1% of the forest was added to be logged.


I'm aware of managed vs natural forests...

From UNESCO:

Threats that require long-term attention via monitoring and continued management programmes include fire management, the impacts of barriers to connectivity, including roads, firebreaks and the border fence

Those things especially fire management (usually by removing deadwood - which bialowieza apparently has 10x as much as the average forest) would require human management.

Like I said, if the entire forest, the whole environment were in some sort of grave danger and was being overlogged without leaving sections untouched I'd say fine - they should stop. However, that is not what is happened. Very small scale logging is occurring which affects 1% of Bialowierza is not a concern...

If you want to discuss a forest that's in jeopardy focus on the Amazon jungle. Unlike Bialowierza where less than 1% of it is to be logged, entire swathes of the jungle have been destroyed - hundreds of thousands of square kilometers... not 78 sq km..

This is a non-issue. People gotta eat and heat their homes. In those areas people are poor and still rely on firewood and handicrafts to sell. It appears the locals as well as loggers have no problem with compromising between leaving certain areas and trees alone but being able to log a tiny portion of the forest and replanting the trees they've cut down with saplings.

PO has a lot to answer for with this, but that in no way justifies the current PiS rape of the forest.

I'm very upset that PO did not depoliticize the civil service when they had the chance - that doesn't mean I welcome the return to commie style patronage that characterizes PiS.

This is quite telling on your opinion concerning logging.....Yes....you don't care much about the forest providing it creates incomes, wellbeing and firewood.....its just a few trees so cut them down and when the firewood runs out, cut some more trees down.....No disrespect to local people near the forest but it seems that to use this group of people as a reason for extensive logging is quite wrong.....

Surely there must be other ways to address peoples incomes and wellbeing without widescale logging....I think PIS really need to be a little more creative with their economic plans and find other ways to generate income for local people.(and the rest of the country) As for firewood.....there must be supplies of wood available from other 'managed' forests.....#


...yes....but there will come a time when tourism will drop and the locals will have no tourists to sell their handicrafts to......the bigger picture is the maintenance of the forest and as a consequence this will benefit locals........as for firewood...is it really necessary to cut down an ancient forest so that people can keep warm....please....there must be other avenues of heating homes.....

Did you even read post #297?

Your '1%' maths is completely wrong, because you confused km2 with hectares, and divided 78 km2 by 3000 ha to get 0.026%.

The logging area for 10 years is ***12%*** of the forest, because it is 78 km2 divided by 630 km2, which is the area of the forest on the Polish side in this link from you:


And if they roll that over in 2021 to another 12% for the next quota (to keep everything the same) that will be a quarter of the forest logged in the lifetime of a bison.


They also have tourism....well, they did until this spring when the logging started in earnest. Tourism has fallen off a cliff this year. Ask the locals. Oh, you can't, you've never been....

Although it's actually 2.6% (78 / 3000 * 100). But that's irrelevent and incorrect.

The number you need is 78 / 630 * 100 = 12.4%, which is the proportion of the forest to be logged until 2021.

@CasualObserver


The area of Bialowieza forest is 3,085.8 km2 - not hectares. The forest is over 140k.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bia%C5%82owie%C5%BCa_Forest

78km2 was added to the logging area

You are right though - it wouldn't be 1% it'd be a bit over 2%

78/3085.8 = .026 (.026 = 2.6%)

Again, negligible. You're not going to convince me that this forest is in danger when a mere 78km2 out of 3,085km2is to be logged....


PiS is doing a wonderful job managing the economy overall. Foreign investors continue to flock in (including JP Morgan just recently announcing 3k additional jobs in Poland), more and more poles (including myself) are moving back to Poland (Companies handling moving from UK to Poland are booked solid), credit rating is amazing, unemployment is at a record low - extremely low esp for a EU nation, inflation is extremely low, GDP is forecasted at 4% which is an amazing figure. All in all they're doing an amazing job with the economy. Plus, the 500 zloty program will help increase Polish birth rates which we desperately need. For a family with 3 kids, they'll get 1,500 as well as a housing subsidy.


Why? The majority of the locals living near the forest are pro logging, pro human management, and against a further expansion of the protected zone. Originally the zone was some 30-40 km2, then increased to 70-80km2, then it was rather recently increased all of a sudden to over 1500km with an additional 1500km2 buffer. They know best - afterall they're the ones living there everyday and the forest is their livelihood. Most of them aren't even commercial loggers but nonetheless many of them live off the forest - selling handicrafts, using the forest for firewood, hunting/foraging for food, etc. Like I said, there is a balance between overlogging and destroying the whole forest and using a tiny fraction of it - which is what they want. But to you for some reason it's 'all or nothing.' Well, the world doesn't work that way. These people have been living there for generations and taking care of the forest. They're sick of people, especially foreigners, getting involved in a forest that they and their descendants have lived in and used for generations.


Actually, I wrote the exact opposite. People are more important than beetles. Hence, I'm more concerned about peoples' wellbeing, income, etc. Again, the beetles will surely survive considering even if the entire 78km2 is logged that still leaves 3,000 km2 of forest. Your precious beetles will be fine.

Either way it doesn't really matter. Logging is going on and clearly they're doing it responsibly as only 78km2 is to be logged - a tiny fraction of the entire forest.

English translation of Szyszko's document polishwolf.org.pl/download/Programme_Bialowieza_Forest.pdf

Point 5 is especially poignant:
Starting a long-term experiment that will allow answering the question who is right. Is it the ones who judge that they know how to utilize natural resources and how to use them, so that the whole world can consider them as primeval forests untouched by the human hand, or that ones who do not own such natural resources in their neighborhood, as they have damaged them in the past, and demand lack of any activities, which according to the first ones is leading to destroying these resources.

In my experience the average local knows next to nothing about ecology. I could go on but what's the point? You believe PiS, I believe every major scientific body.

@Roger5

You're right. But they know they need the forest for their livelihood as they and their families have lived there for generations. I don't believe PiS, PO or anyone until I come up with a conclusion myself. I don't side with a person, group, etc. just because I agree with them on some other policy. For example, while I support PiS' economic plan and plan to increase birthrates, I was against their attempts to curtail abortion.

You can believe all the scientists you want. They'll also tell you that the logging affects a tiny fraction of the forest - 78 km2 out of over 3000km2. They're crying about the 2% and most of it is political being pushed by people on Greenpeace/Client Earth/etc payrolls. It doesn't take a PhD to figure out that logging a tiny section, 2% of the forest, isn't going to have any sort of major impact on the remaining 98% - especially logging and replanting trees. If they were mining or drilling that'd be a different story - but they aren't. If you actually bothered to read the letter from Szyszko, you'd realize that they are going to comply with preserving the forest, won't log certain areas, and Natura 2000 guidelines.

"Because of the different ideas, aiming at protection of habitats 91IO, 91DO and 91EO, as well as species of these habitats, in 2016 the area of the three forest districts will be divided into two representative parts at which the protection of these habitats and the species of these habitats is to be conducted. The first part, constituting about 1/3 of the area,in line with the suggestions of the European Commission, UNESCO, a part of scientists and part of the public, will be left without any human interference, consequently a total ban on tree logging will be introduced. The second part, in line with the suggestions of the other part of scientists, State Forests, part of the public and the predominant part of the local community, will be subject to the activities of ecological engineering through the implementation of the forest management plans."

You guys ought to be more objective. You act as if all of Bialowieza is now suddenly in danger when logging will affect only 2% of the forest - 78km2 out of over 3000km2.

Ok, Dirk, I see what you're doing - you've included **Belarus** in the total area of the Forest area, and used that total area of 3000 km2.

Ok, so you have then said that logging of 78 km2 on the Polish side is therefore of little consequence to such an area, as it makes up only 2.6%.

Let me explain why that is a false logic.

Firstly, that area of 3000 km2 is actually the whole puszcza, which includes meadows, fields and other open areas. The actual area of tree cover across the puszcza in Poland and Belarus is about 1600 km2. Of that, 870 km2 of tree cover is in Belarus, and 630 km2 is in Poland. polishwolf.org.pl/bialowieza-forest

So the 78 km2 of logging represents 4.9% of the tree cover across both countries, to be felled by 2021.

That is still a lot. Would you be happy to lose 5% of your income by 2021? Is that begligible to you? How about 5% of the hair cover on your head. Would you notice that?

However, talking about Poland and Belarus together is also false logic, and here's why:

The two parts of the forest are acftually separated by a fence. This is a barrier that divides mammals on one side from those on the other, and their access to habitat. So a Lynx in Poland cannot access habitat and prey in belarus. To the lynx, or the bison, or wolves, or elk, or badger, the Polish forest is all there is - the other part effectively doesn't exist fore them. And so all they have access to is 630 km2.

For people and business too, all they have access to is 630 km2, due to the national and EU border.

So Polish (and EU) tourism, science, culture and recreation has access to 630 km2. It has no economic or other everyday access to Belarus, but it has no freedom of movement there.

Therefore, in ecological, tourism, recreational and scientific terms, form the Polish side the functional area of the forest is 630 km2.

As 78 km2 is now scheduled to be logged on the Polish side by 2021, that will deplete those resources by 12%.

At that rate, all of the Polish side of the forest will be gone in about 83 years.

Even if that does not happen, the current regime is committed having felled more than 1 in 10 trees on the Polish side within the next 4 years (2021).

You might be happy with that, you might think it;s worth it, you might think the cheap firewood is more important, you might think it doesn't matter because there's plenty of trees left in Belarus, but, please, do not try and tell us that it is not a significant and rapid depletion of the forest resources in Poland.

He's desperate to find ways to justify PiS's terrible policies, give him a break.

Bialowieza is a forest in two countries... so yes I'm talking about the forest as a whole obviously which is over 3k sq km. Even if 78km2 were logged, and replanted it still would have negligible impact - even on just the Polish side.


Trees are a renewable resource.... like money, hair, or whatever strange analogy you chose to use - money can be made reearned, hair will regrow, and trees can be replanted and regrow. Again, logging has far less damaging impacts on a forest than other economic activities. You should be happy that gold, oil, or other minerals weren't found - then there'd be no forest or any viable land to plant trees on.


Now you're just making assumptions. Idc who rules Poland as long as the GDP is growing and there's no Islamic terror attacks like France, Germany, etc. For one, I don't even agree with a lot of their decisions but at least they're listening to Polish peoples' concerns and not bending their knee to the EU

@CasualObserver

Do you live in Bialowieza or near it? I'm willing to bet no. So leave it to our democratically elected leaders, the locals who live in that area, and the managers of the forests to make the decisions.

Either way, logging will continue with the majority of the locals living near the forest supporting the decision. The vast forest will not get destroyed as again, the entire forest is not set to be logged but only a portion of it and the trees will be replanted - it is not turning into some farm, mine, etc. which would permanently erase the forest. And even then it would only be a small portion of it... You build infrastructure in 1 area, and wilderness expands in other parts.

Poland has called the bluff of a few unelected commissars, namely Timmermans, and it will continue to do so. Such is the game of politics. If it feels that something is truly at stake, it will negotiate if it feels like it will lose money or local support. Till that happens with the Bialowieza issue, logging will continue and people on Greenpeace's payroll have proven to not be a big enough threat.

DD = "still would have negligible impact - even on just the Polish side."

No, for the reasons I pointed out to you (fences, barriers to movement, access).

DD = "Trees are a renewable resource...."

No, old growth forest is not, unless you want to wait about 500 or 1000 years.

DD = "Do you live in Bialowieza or near it? I'm willing to bet no."

You bet wrong, cos some of the year I do.

DD = "So leave it to our democratically elected leaders, the locals who live in that area, and the managers of the forests to make the decisions."

You forgot the democratically elected MEPs of the EU, who says it's illegal, and the Polish Academy of Sciences, who say it is wrong.

Care to back that up with some evidence? Because there's a lot of hotel and restaurant owners, tour guides, drivers, campsites and shops in the area who might disagree with you, because when Szyszko closed 2/3 of the forest to public access (also illegal) this spring, and started cutting down the thing that tourists had come to see, it hit their businesses.

I answered this question for you in post 310, so will you pay me the same compliment and answer this truthfully: have you ever been the Bialowieza Forest?

The Mods moved that post to off-topic CO so here it is just in case Dirk missed it first time round (have to shorten you, it's too much of a mouthful but hey, you are the Commanding Officer in this scenario, I'll follow you through the forest to my certain death).



So here you are, with your great expertise, derived from working in sales, explaining science to a scientist.


You really have to stop this Adrian. You're going down the route you pursued during your first round of membership when you persisted in disputing the numbers who died in the Holocaust, denying the existence of gas chambers etc. frantically scrabbling round the internet, quoting reams and reams of stuff from various websites, trying to convince people that your personal opinion is fact. You're a salesman, not a scientist and you're not in a position to do more than comment on Białowieża in the same manner as any other ignorant townie and I include myself in that. I lived in the countryside, in a heavily forested area for several years but I'm no expert on trees or forest management and when it comes to conservation I read the opinions of those who are, of whom CO is one. If experts around the world are largely in agreement due to their scientific knowledge and the years of research and observation on which they draw, then I'm willing to accept their assessment of the situation.


Not if you have male pattern baldness it won't. Once an area of scalp is completely bald it's impossible to regrow. You must have at least a couple of hairs Homer Simpson style - so don't leave it too late Ada :)

A few pics from last Sunday in Białowieża.

• 
  Don't mess with the Żubroń
  
• 
  Magnificent
  
• 
  A waste of saleable timber, or a habitat for countless organisms?
  

The problem that Adrian and Gumishu and Polonius have with the logging is that it is about politcs and not about the forest for them. If that minister clown Szyszko acted on behalf of a PO government, the three of them would be fiercly and unanimously against him and against any logging in the Białowieża Forest. But because the logging is being carried out by the PiS government they are for it with all their hearts. The discussion with politically-only-motivated people is simply useless.

On the other hand, I have an impression that CO's stance on the subject would have been the same irrespectively of what political party stands behind the decision to start the logging

Z. Nailed it.

No, you seem to think that The BNF has just sprung out of nothing or just has been a lucky fart in the order of things. Nothing doing, it has been an end result of the clever and skillful menagement of the Forest by thePoles. Something they have been doing for centuries.. Out of sudden UNECO's pen pushers and European Commission is meddling into something they have no clue about.

Why don't they bugger off?


Nah you're the one who is desperate to see a wrong in everything PiS do or not doesn't do.

It has. Primeval forests do.


Primeval forests have grown without any management by the Poles (or anyone else for that matter) and part of the BNF is a primeval forest. The point is to leave and keep them untouched as long as possible.

Btw, have you heard of minister Szyszko shooting to the pheasants which were let free from cages right under the fire from the Minister for the Environment and his clown colleagues. That made big headlines in Poland, but probably none in Norway.

wiadomosci.wp.pl/wp-ujawnia-skandaliczne-polowanie-szyszki-500-bazantow-wyrzuconych-pod-lufe-6098745194869377a

The 'management' was based on exclusion and minimum intervention - keeping people/industry out, and preventing them from chopping down trees and killing animals (to keep that right for the Kings, Czars, Reichsjaegermeister, high ranking Party Officials).

Poland then joined the EU, and enthusiastically placed BNP in the Natura 2000 Network, which legally obliges them (under EU and so Polish law) not to chop down large numbers of trees or otherwise exploit the forest. UNESCO recognised Poland's "skillful management" of keeping out the general public and industry for 1000 years by recognising it as a World Heritage Site, due to its state of preservation.


Strange, because what I'#m saying is exactly the same as the Polish Academy of Sciences, which is the state's scientific advisory body. I suppose they're 'green nutts' too. All of those Prof dr hab in the universities and institutes, set up to advise the government on scientific matters. Green nutts, according to you. Sad that you have such a low opinion of Poland's top academics, and the nation's choice of scientific advisors...

Wit.. it mean that it wasn't logged to a tree, it deosn't mean it wasn't logged at all. In fact most of the area has been managed for centuries and since 1948 they are maps in existence of what has been done and where. So if someone has no clue but an idea are those like CO and other westerners who looged evrything to the ground and now they want to teach others because they think they are better or wiser - they are not - they are stuck up morons,

So called natural method means they most of the trees will either be eaten by Beatles, and then fire will burn most of it to the ground of all and then a new trees will grow. In Siberia such a natural fires go for years on end.

Do you whish to have a clouds of ash up your ass for two years just because some green nutters with no clue but with a big chip of 'I know better' say so?

Well with the exception when such a natural disaster strike - like those little beatles. What would you do - leave it be to be burned to the ground?

Getting ready to start devouring the trees...

d1e7s0fmwz7rm9.cloudfront.net/img/content/in-the-trees.jpg

Is no forest safe from these mop-topped menaces?

If you replant a tree, it will grow back far sooner - 50 to 100 years. Left to natural processes it will take 500+ years.


First off, I studied medicine well before I got into business and I've taken all the classes necessary to get into med school - bio, o chem, io chem, biophysics, etc. I switched because I realized there was far more money to be made and far more quickly working in finance and sales. I wasn't interested in making $40k a year with a bachelors in biology and then putting myself in debt to go to medical school. Furthermore, the scientific process is learned in grade school/high school. It doesn't take a PhD to understand what the scientific method is. The fact that CO would use strange analogies like death and hair growth and seem to not quite understand what constitutes the scientific method makes me question whether he is in fact a scientist with a phd/masters or merely a technician of sorts.

Second, forestry, parks/recreation, etc. were the majors that the top athletes at unis all over the US choose because they're ridiculously easy and require next to no study. These aren't difficult topics... we're talking about forests, trees, and plants not rockets, brains, engines, insect physiology etc. Plants are among the most simple living multicell organisms - its just that there's tons of different species.


You realize that Szyszko is also a scientist and carries the title of professor. Scientists disagree with each other all the time - including this case and especially as it pertains to global warming, c02, etc. Most scientists didn't think that lead in gasoline was a big deal back in the day. Oftentimes they're paid to say certain things (even if they believe otherwise) by more powerful lobbies, politicians, corporations, etc. who treat scientists as nerdy pawns.

The fact is that Bialowieza has been taken care of for hundreds of years, generation after generation who live near the forest and rely on it for their livelihood. This same sort of community has existed since the time of the Czars. Obviously they know that there's a line between using the forest and logging to the point of destruction and hunting the animals to the point of extinction. Speaking of which, the bison in bialowieza isn't even Polish as that species was wiped out. It's a species that was brought in from the Caucasus. The people in this area are against this sudden intrusion and while they certainly will listen to the advice of various


I never denied that the Holocaust didn't occur. What I did say is the numbers of dead have been revised numerous times and pointed to various examples such as the fact that in 1989 suddenly the amount of dead at Auschwitz was lowered by 1 million.

@Ziemowit
You really shouldn't' t make assumptions about people - that's what causes ignorance. Like I said, I don't care about parties, politicians, etc. I can more about policies and actions. If PO PiS NOP KOD whoever keeps Poland growing and keeps the country from turning into a place with years of state of emergency like France and prevents Islamic terror - I'm all for them. When PiS made that ridiculous assault on abortion I was the one of the first to condemn that action.

@CasualObserver
Yes several times. My friends from high school lives in Bialystok and whenever I visit him we often go in a group and go camping in Bialowieza.

Just a casual observation but Casual Observer does come across as far more rational and methodical in this argument than you do.

Iron side has obviously come back from a night of overpriced vodka at the Red Apple and lost the power of spelling - beetle is a tough one but "wish" instead of whish should be easy.

Well, I'm convinced. DD knows more about this than any scientist. Perhaps if the rest of you acknowledged this he'd stfu.

Still can't deny that 78km2 out of over 3,000km2 is 2.6% of the entire forest - a tiny fraction. It doesn't take a PhD to realize that. Hence, no need to worry about imminent destruction of all of Bialowieza as no such thing is occurring nor will it occur. A tiny ratio of the overall forest that's going to be logged - that's it. Like I said, if there was an imminent danger of the entire forest being wiped out I'd be in total agreement - but that isn't what's happening. The fact remains a tiny fraction of all of Bialowieza is being logged - not even mined, turned into farmland, etc. which would have far more devastating effects than logging and replanting.

Poland vows to continue logging in Białowieża forest despite court ban - Good for them for not allowing a court outside of Poland's border to dictate decisions within.

theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/31/poland-continue-logging-biaowieza-forest-despite-eu-court-ban

birdlife.org/europe-and-central-asia/news/trial-error-battle-bia%C5%82owie%C5%BCa
'The bark beetle is menacing Białowieża - this much is true.'

Jego racja, nasz spokój?