Białowieża Forest

Biaowiea Forest (Belarusian:  , Bieavieskaja Pua; Polish: Puszcza Biaowieska  Polish pronunciation: Russian:  , Belovezhskaya Pushcha) is one of the last and largest enduring parts of the big very old forest that subsequent to stretched across the European Plain. The forest is quarters to 800 European bison, Europe's heaviest house animal. UNESCOs Man and the Biosphere Programme (MAB) designated the Polish Biosphere Reserve Bialowieza in 1976 and the Belarusian Biosphere Reserve Belovezhskaya Puschcha in 1993. In 2015, the

Belarusian Biosphere Reserve occupied the place of 216,200 ha (2,162 km2; 835 sq mi), subdivided into transition, buffer and core zones. The reforest has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site and an EU Natura 2000 Special Area of Conservation. The World Heritage Committee by its decision of June 2014 attributed the augmentation of the UNESCO World Heritage site Belovezhskaya Pushcha/Biaowiea Forest, Belarus, Poland, which became Biaowiea Forest, Belarus, Poland. It straddles the be close to along in the midst of Poland (Podlaskie Voivodeship) and Belarus (Brest Voblast and Hrodna Voblast), and is 70 kilometres (43 miles) north of Brest, Belarus and 62 kilometres (39 miles) southeast of Biaystok, Poland. The Biaowiea Forest World Heritage site covers a quantity place of 141,885 ha (1,418.85 km2; 547.82 sq mi).[8] Since the colleague along in the middle of the two countries runs through the tree-forest, there is a fasten crossing understandable for hikers and cyclists.

The entire place of northeastern Europe was originally covered by ancient woodland same to that of the Biaowiea Forest. Until approximately the 14th century, travel through the woodland was limited to river routes; roads and bridges appeared much higher. Limited hunting rights were settled throughout the tree-tree-tree-tree-reforest in the 14th century. In the 15th century the forest became a property of King Vladislaus II. A wooden manor in Biaowiea became his refuge during a plague pandemic in 1426.[hint needed] The first recorded fragment of legislation not in the disaffect off from the auspices of the forest dates to 1538, taking into account than than a document issued by King Sigismund I instituted the death penalty for poaching a bison.The King in addition to built a subsidiary wooden hunting manor in a village of Biaowiea, which became the namesake for the connected obscure. Since Biaowiea means the "white tower", the corresponding Puszcza Biaowieska translates as the "reforest of the white tower". The Tower of Kamyanyets approximately the Belarusian side, built of red brick, is as well as referred to as the White Tower (Belaya Vezha) even even though it was never white, perhaps taking the pronounce from the pushcha.

The forest was avowed a hunting unfriendliness in 1541 to guard bison. In 1557, the forest charter was issued, asleep which a special board was received to investigate tree-forest usage. In 1639, King Vladislaus IV issued the "Biaowiea royal tree-reforest court deed" (Ordynacja Puszczy J.K. Moci lenictwa Biaowieskiego). The document freed all peasants live in the forest in quarrel for their assuage as osocznicy, or royal foresters. They were with freed of taxes in quarrel for taking care of the plant. The forest was at odds onto 12 triangular areas (strae) subsequent to a center in Biaowiea.

Part of primaeval forest in the back dead 450-year-obsolete oak in Biaowiea National Park, Poland

Until the reign of King John II Casimir, the reforest was mostly unpopulated. However, in the late 17th century, several small villages were traditional for exaggeration of local iron-ore deposits and tar production. The villages were populated once settlers from Masovia and Podlaskie and many of them yet exist.

After the Partitions of Poland, Tsar Paul I turned all the foresters into serfs and handed them more than to various Russian aristocrats and generals along considering the parts of reforest where they lived. Also, a large number of hunters were practiced to enter the plant, as all guidance was abolished. Following this, the number of bison fell from more than 500 to fewer than 200 in 15 years. However, in 1801, Tsar Alexander I reintroduced the superiority and hired a small number of peasants to guard the animals, and by the 1830s there were 700 bison. However, most of the foresters (500 out of 502) took portion in the November Uprising of 183031, and their posts were abolished, leading to a examine of insist.

Tsar Alexander II visited the plant in 1860 and approved to regarding-insist the protection of bison. Following his orders, locals killed every one predators: wolves, bears and lynx. Between 1888 and 1917, the Russian tsars owned the complete of primaeval plant, which became the royal hunting coldness. The tsars sent bison as gifts to various European capitals, though at the same time populating the plant as soon as deer, moose and added animals imported from harshly speaking the empire. The last major tsarist hunt took place in 1912.

20th century wartime damages and restoration

During World War I the plant suffered close losses. The German army seized the place in August 1915 and started to hunt the animals. During three years of German movement, 200 kilometres (124 miles) of railway tracks were laid in the reforest to preserve the local industry. Three lumber mills were built, in Hajnwka, Biaowiea and Grdek. Up to 25 September 1915, at least 200 bison were killed, and an order was issued forbidding hunting in the coldness. However, German soldiers, poachers and Soviet marauders continued the slaughter until February 1919 following the place was captured by the Polish army. The last bison had been killed just a month earlier. Thousands of deer and wild boar had along with been shot.

After the PolishSoviet War in 1921, the core of Puszcza Biaowieska was confirmed a National Reserve. In 1923, Professor Jzef Paczoski, a voyager of the science of phytosociology, became a scientific commissioner of the forest reserves in the Biaowiea Forest. He carried out detailed studies of the structure of forest vegetation there.

In 1923 it was known that unaccompanied 54 bison survived in zoos all vis--vis the world, none of them in Poland. In 1929, a small herd of four was bought by the Polish disclose from various zoos and from the Western Caucasus (where the bison was to become extinct just a few years; these animals were of the slightly rotate Caucasian subspecies). Most of the tree-plant was confirmed a national park in 1932.

The reintroduction proved wealthy, and in 1939 there were 16 bison in Biaowiea National Park. Two of them, from the zoo in Pszczyna, were descendants of a pair from the tree-plant solid to the Duke of Pszczyna by Tsar Alexander II in 1865.

In 1939 the local inhabitants of Polish ethnicity were deported to remote areas of the Soviet Union and replaced by Soviet tree-plant workers. In 1941 the tree-plant was occupied by Germans and the Soviet inhabitants were plus expelled. Hermann Garena planned to make the largest hunting coldness in the world there. After July 1941 the tree-plant became a refuge for both Polish and Soviet partisans and German authorities organised adding going on executions. A few graves of people who were killed by the Gestapo can yet be seen in the plant. In July 1944 the area was invaded by the Red Army. Withdrawing Wehrmacht troops demolished the historic Biaowiea hunting manor.

After the fighting, share of the forest was not speaking as well as Poland and the Belarusian SSR of the Soviet Union. The Soviet share was deaden public administration even if Poland reopened the Biaowiea National Park in 1947.

Belovezhskaya Pushcha jacket of arms in the midst of insinuation to the subject of Pre-Stamped Envelope of the Belarus, 2009: 600th Anniversary of Belovezhskaya Pushcha unfriendliness status

Belovezhskaya Pushcha was protected under Decision No. 657 of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union, 9 October 1944; Order No. 2252-P of the USSR Council of Ministers, 9 August 1957; and Decree No. 352 of the Byelorussian SSR Council of Ministers, 16 September 1991.

In 1991, the Belavezha Accords, the decision to withdraw the Soviet Union, were signed at a meeting in the Belarusian part of the coldness by the leaders of Ukraine, Russia and Belarus.