BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

26/12/2007

UNESCO adds jubilee of Belarussian preserve to list of memorial dates

MINSK, December 25 (Itar-Tass) - UNESCO has added to its list of memorial dates the 600th anniversary since establishment of special protective regulations on the territory of Belarus's most renowned Belovezhskaya Pushcha woodland preserve, mostly known in the outside world as the Bialowieza Primeval Forest.

Vladimir Schastlivy, the chairman of Belarus's national commission for relations with UNESCO said the decision was taken at the 34th session of the organization's General Conference.

The jubilee itself will be observed in December 2009, but preparations for it have already begun, said Nikolai Bambiza, the director general of the Belarussian part of this cross-border preserve, the other part of which is located in Poland.

"By the beginning of celebrations, we'll have completed an overhaul of housing and utilities in all the big and small villages located on the territory of the preserve - and we have about two dozens of them - and will have repaired old buildings of forestry protection stations or will have built new ones," he said.

Architects are now drafting the design of a special compound that will replicate elements of the old house of the czars in the town of Belovezha. It will also include a museum of nature and the so-called 'house of ecological education'.

Despite this construction activity, the main goal the personnel of this unparalleled preserve sets for itself it to maintain its really unique ecological systems, as the preserve is known to have groves of oak trees up to 600 years old, aspens in the age bracket 300 to 350 years old, and pine trees planted some 200 years ago.

Apart from relatively widespread animals like wild boars and elks, the preserve also boasts wisents /European bison/, the population of which lived through many perils in the first half of the 20th century and lives there under special protection there from the mid-1940's.

Polish King Wladyslaw II Jagiello made the Belovezhsky forest his own property at the beginning of the 15th century, and it turned into a hunting preserve in 1541 to protect the wisent.

Source:

http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=12215454&PageNum=0