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Last major primeval forest in Europe on 'brink of collapse'
- jdavis703 9y agoHow come the other countries were allowed to benefit from logging and destroying their own primeval forests, but because Poland was the last one they're being called out? If the UN or EU were serious about this, they'd offer to buy out the forest at whatever the market rate is for this wood, and Poland would use that money the retrain the forest workers.
- webnrrd2k 9y agoThat's a good point. It's also worth considering this: isn't there a difference between having 90% of a forest left and 5% of a forest? I know that it's not exactly fair, but that is more-or-less the situation we have now. There were once vast swaths or virgin forest, and now there is very little left. Are the situations the same? Should people behave the same now as they did then? Ultimately everyone needs to decide for themselves.
- Neliquat 9y agoBecause they, too, know better? I get your reasoning, but with equal position one could argue that in the clear retrospective light of our failures, theirs would be a larger one, by both proportion, and foreknowledge of its effects. Its a sticky wicket because nobody has good economic incentive to save it right now.
- test6554 9y agoThe conclusion of "old things must be preserved" leads to a sticky wicket as you call it. Maybe it is the wrong conclusion. What if we started instead with a question: "What is the best use for this land" and then work out from there.
- omginternets 9y ago"When the sage points to the moon, the fool looks at his finger". The argument is most assuredly not that "all old things must be preserved". Rather it's that this old thing should be preserved. The fact that the forrest is old is incidental. It's only relevant because it explains that we can't just pull a new primeval forrest out of our asses. But you knew this.
- danbruc 9y agoWhile I understand what you are aiming at, I don't think it is that simple. Should someone pay me for not having slaves and not being able to profit from exploiting them because I am a century or two late and missed the good old time when it was not yet an unacceptable practice?
- nordsieck 9y agoIf you legally acquired them, then yes. The British experience ending slavery was far more humane than the US one.
- danbruc 9y agoI don't think I would agree with that, it actually seems somewhat more reasonable to me that one would have to pay compensations to the slaves. But that was not my point anyway. In the past having slaves was acceptable, now it no longer is. Nobody owes me any compensation just because exploiting slaves is no longer an option available to me. In the past it was acceptable to exploit forest without many considerations, but when we now decide that this is no longer the case, then it is at least not obvious that anyone owes you any compensation.
- lkrubner 9y agoYou can't own human beings, because it violates their fundamental rights. This was true back when slavery was "legal". The Nazis could pass a law saying that the Holocaust was legal, but the rest of the world felt free to disregard that law, and put the Nazis on trial. Some laws are not legal, that is the whole entire point of the West's 2,400 year old liberal tradition. Likewise, some claims of ownership are not legal, and not binding. You can pay good money for a slave, but you still don't own the slave, because no law can make it legal to own another human being. And this was true for all of the thousands of years that slavery was legal: none of those laws were ever legitimate, and none of those ownership claims were ever legitimate.
- Swizec 9y ago> You can't own human beings, because it violates their fundamental rights. This was true back when slavery was "legal". There's no such thing as fundamental rights. Those were won by sweat and blood. Up until the enlightenment and humanist eras there was not even the idea that such a thing as rights even exists. Some inkling of rights existed for royalty in the codes of conduct and such things, but they were freedoms given by right of birth and power of ancestor's sword. For peasants, no such luck. They were property even though they weren't slaves per se.
- strainer 9y ago>allowed to benefit from logging and destroying their own primeval forests What a sorry idea to still see afloat in 2017, that even the last remnants of special natural habitats should be allowed to be destroyed for "benefit"
- test6554 9y agoEven better. The EU should purchase that entire property and pay the market price for wooded land, pay annual property taxes to Poland and hire Polish workers to maintain and preserve the land for as long as they value preservation over the cost of preservation.
- bananaXbanana 9y agoEU already paid it, by letting poland be in the eu.
- krona 9y agoI Agree with your general point, however Poland nominated the land for UNESCO natural world heritage site status, not the UN, or the EU, and such things are protected by international treaties (ie the Geneva Convention).
- markvdb 9y agoMost people don't benefit from the logging and destroying the primeval forests in the country they live in. Quite to the contrary. The rest of Europe has to work with a Polish government right now that is anti-ecology, reactionary and anti-EU. The destruction of trees both in cities and forests is just collateral damage to those in power in Poland.
- lkrubner 9y agoYour question would make more sense if you reversed it: why should Poland lose a priceless treasure just so some greedy capitalists can rape it?
- pjc50 9y agoAccident of history, I suppose; most of the other primeval forest would have gone a long time ago. The remaining patches in the UK, for example, are tiny: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_woodland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_woodland E.g. in 1773 Samuel Johnson’s famous tour of Scotland he complains about the lack of trees in the country. As far as I understand this was due to resource depletion for construction and fuel. WW2 also caused both direct destruction of woodland and huge resource pressure across most of Europe.
- riffraff 9y agoPoland has about 1% of its area as national parks, which is less than most of the EU countries.
- frabbit 9y agoOr alternatively Poland could be kicked out of the EU and UN for failing to abide by the laws and conventions that they signed up to when they joined. I think that would be fairer.
- b0rsuk 9y agoSome Polish politicians and publicists believe this is actually what the ruling Law&Justice party is trying aiming for! If Poland is kicked out of EU, they will spin that as "EU is bad, EU is harassing us for no reason". Law&Justice faces a lot of opposition from pro-EU citizens of Poland. If they manage to vilify EU and create turmoil, they can remain in power by blaming everything on external enemies. Law&Justice is using divide&conquer strategy, except they divide their own country and fuel internal conflicts.
- anigbrowl 9y agoAbsolutely. Same thing with Brexit and numerous other phenomena. Nationalists hate supranational and globalist institutions because globalism is totalizing, ie it offers a complete worldview. Nationalism is implicitly predicated on the idea that there's enough for everyone else, this bit is ours, and that what we do here doesn't affect anyone else. Ultimatey, it's an anti-scientific philosophy.
- jbmorgado 9y agoYou are totally out of your depth, you don't even understand what you are talking about and you are making a ridiculous argument in defence of destroying an invaluable ecological heritage. This is PRIMEVAL forest. You in Poland DON'T have more protected areas than most of other EU countries already, you just happen to have a small one (relative to other EU countries) that has the special status of being primeval and you still think it's ok to destroy it for some quick profit while the rest of EU is trying to rebuild their own forest (although unfortunately it just can't be primeval again).
- omginternets 9y agoEt tu quoque, mi fili. Whether or not the rest of the EU are hypocrites does nothing to change the fact that this is wrong and alarming.
- ajross 9y agoPoland has been continuously inhabited by wood cutting cultures for thousands of years. That point... sorta doesn't work. You seem to be implying that Poland missed the industrial revolution somehow (it didn't), and/or that the industrial revolution was driven in some significant way by wood products (nope). Or maybe you think Poland during its half-century of artificially stunted development was somehow... not cutting down trees because communism? It's... wood. Communists knew how to build stuff out of it too.
- onestone 9y agoSeems clickbaity and inaccurate. List of many other "primeval" forests in Europe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_old-growth_forests#Eurasia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_old-growth_forests#Eur...
- f_allwein 9y agoI think it's a matter of definition - elsewhere, Wikipedia says "Białowieża Forest, Europe's last temperate primaeval forest fragment..." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bia%C5%82owie%C5%BCa_National_Park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bia%C5%82owie%C5%BCa_National_...
- JohnDuh 9y agoThe Hacker News headline is misleading. The article calls it the "last major primeval forest in Europe" which is more accurate. Białowieża forest is around 40 000 hectares, while very few of the other ones left is bigger than 2000 hectares.
- masklinn 9y agoThe other "primeval" forests are relatively small patches, they're not proper self-sustaining forests, Białowieża is the only one remaining. The biggest "primeval" forest in France is 25sqkm, Pyhä-Häkki in Finland is 13, Perućica is 14, Puzzlewood could be called pocketwood. Białowieża is 3000 sq km, the World Heritage Site portion is 1400sq km.
- yread 9y agoRomanian Retezat is about 380 sq. km
- EGreg 9y agoWhy don't they put a lot of sunlight-powered cameras around the forest to find people coming and going?
- hagakure0c 9y agoWe should grow hemp all over the planet, industrial scale, low THC grade of course. From space we can look at our blue and green hemp planet.
- wavefunction 9y agoI've been casually investigating hemp as a carbon fixer, as a hobby. I think paired with bamboo it could provide both sustainable materials for much of life's needs along with a terrific ability to fix atmospheric carbon. If nothing else the plant material can be bio-charred upon post-harvest and processing. Also been looking at bamboo and hemp for things like water/soil/air purification, though it's all very casual.
- hagakure0c 9y agoWe can also use hemp for nutrition, clothing, building materials, paper among many other things. Yes, grow this plant on an industrial scale all over the planet.
- pjc50 9y agoThis is basically the same process as the logging of the rainforest; it's nominally protected, but a combination of poverty, greed and weak law enforcement means the protection is ineffective.
- baq 9y agoThe difference here is that this logging is state-sanctioned.
- jakozaur 9y agoPoland used to have reasonable government. Now we have Trump-lite version. Just one example environment minister: Jan Szyszko 1. Approves logging near national park on massive scale. 2. Lax regulation for cutting down trees everywhere. 3. Claims it is highly uncertain if global warming is due to human activity. 4. Hunter, shoot to animals a lot while being environment minister. 5. Works hard to protect coal mine industry.
- patrickg_zill 9y agoAs an aside, some hunters work to preserve the natural area, viewing hunting and nature appreciation as something both enjoyable and to be passed down to future generations. For example, Ducks Unlimited http://www.ducks.org/ http://www.ducks.org/ .
- adrianN 9y agoSince we've eliminated so many predators, hunting is necessary to control populations. I would however prefer it if we reintroduced natural predators instead.
- GFischer 9y agoI saw a pretty cool documentary on how reintroducing wolves to Yellowstone changed the ecosystem for the better. Not the one I saw but very similar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysa5OBhXz-Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysa5OBhXz-Q More serious article: http://www.yellowstonepark.com/wolf-reintroduction-changes-ecosystem/ http://www.yellowstonepark.com/wolf-reintroduction-changes-e...
- DamnYuppie 9y agoAgreed. Most of the hunters and anglers I know are pro conservation. Backcountry Hunters and Anglers www.backcountryhunters.org Trout Unlimited www.tu.org/
- jakozaur 9y agoAgree, though this guy is far from ethic hunting: http://www.dw.com/en/widespread-tree-felling-sparks-outrage-in-poland/a-38774808 http://www.dw.com/en/widespread-tree-felling-sparks-outrage-...
- DaggerDagger 9y agoTrees grow back, and so do forests. Let's focus on the plasticization of the oceans instead of the trees which grow in the ground. The Earth is mostly ocean and it's actually a good thing to cut down forests, it creates new opportunities for new organisms to move in and pioneer the land. North Carolina used to be a large portion of prairie called Piedmont. But the dense farming of the NC piedmont resulted in the new growth forests springing up when people moved westward and farms died. Forests grow so quickly we forget that "old growth" is like a hundred year old tree. Deforestation and reforestation is a natural cycle and it's actually not as bad as say a giant miasma of microplastic or a giant toxic algae bloom caused by agricultural run off.
- batrat 9y agoYou work for Ikea? The problem is that nobody is planting them back.
- maxerickson 9y agoIt isn't necessarily required to plant trees back. It depends on the type of management and cutting being done. One strategy is to remove the highest value trees from time to time, as they tend to be larger and removing them creates space for smaller trees to grow larger. Such harvests will also remove smaller trees that are unlikely to increase in value (often sold as paper pulp or wood chips, not necessarily discarded). This creates space for new trees to grow. At the extreme you do have companies cutting down everything and using herbicide cocktails to prepare the ground for planting.
- adrianN 9y agoThe biodiversity contained in current old-growth forest might not "grow back" for quite some time though. In any case, we have the ressources to address both pollution and the destruction of forests, there is no need to decide between the two.
- baq 9y agoDisagree. Both are worth paying attention to.
- myth_drannon 9y agoBelovezhskaya Pushcha is one of the oldest official natural reserves in Europe. I can't give the sources right now but it was already protected area 600 hundred years ago. It had a special status since the early times of Russian Empire. Even Nazi Germany during its invasion to USSR recognized the importance of the forest and didn't sent the army through it and kept it intact. Also it is a home to bisons which were extinct in North America and recently some animals were transfered from it for repopulation.
- qbaqbaqba 9y agoBelovezhskaya Pushcha - are you referring to the Belorussian part? Nazi Germans were cutting the forest quite happily, USSR did some heavy damages by draining whatever they could and European bison is quite different than the American one.
- Markoff 9y agogood luck Polish government for destroying one if the three reasons I am considering visit of Poland (other two would be sand dunes on the beach and Osviecim)
- oz 9y agoI spent two weeks in Poland last summer. Might I recommend Zakopane, hell, the entire Tatra Mountains region while we're at it? Absolutely spectacular.
- Markoff 9y agoI heard they are less touristy on Slovak side.
- tabasz 9y agoPoles would rather catch up with highly industrialized Western Europe than live in a poor, sparsely populated open-air museum.
- spatulon 9y agoMaciej Cegłowski wrote an essay about his trip to Białowieża forest some number of years ago. Like everything on his site, it's worth reading. http://www.idlewords.com/2012/02/bia%C5%82owie%C5%BCa_forest.htm http://www.idlewords.com/2012/02/bia%C5%82owie%C5%BCa_forest...
- frabbit 9y agoThank you for that link. Well worth reading as it is both funny and informative: The principal large mammals in Białowieża are the bison, moose, wolf, boar, bobcat, and graduate student. The last spends a lengthy juvenile period studying forest theory in Western Europe before migrating in to do field work and possibly mate.
- dgregd 9y agoI wonder how HN will explain this [1]: "In western North America, the current outbreak of the mountain pine beetle and its microbial associates has destroyed wide areas of lodgepole pine forest, including more than 16 million of the 55 million hectares of forest in British Columbia. The current outbreak in the Rocky Mountain National Park began in 1996 and has caused the destruction of millions of acres of ponderosa and lodgepole pine trees. According to an annual assessment by the state's forest service, 264,000 acres of trees in Colorado were infested by the mountain pine beetle at the beginning of 2013. This was much smaller than the 1.15 million acres that were affected in 2008 because the beetle has already killed off most of the vulnerable trees" Of course something similar cannot happen in Poland. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_pine_beetle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_pine_beetle
- omginternets 9y agoWhat, exactly, are you insinuating? That parasites are driving Poles to cut down trees? If so, where's the evidence that this is the case?
- dgregd 9y agoEuropean spruce bark beetle [1] infected a large number of trees. That's a fact. Foresters are obliged to protected the forest and do try to this by eliminating infected trees. The first such action was conducted 100 years ago. Some experts disagree with that method of stopping the beetle plague, and think that the forest should heal itself. Other experts don't want just to watch dying forest and try to do something. Hence the argument. Because experts are divided, this is a great opportunity to attack the government. Unfortunately there is no substantive discussion, even here on HN. Try to guess if current Polish government is left or right wing. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_spruce_bark_beetle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_spruce_bark_beetle
- thraway23 9y agoYour argument is I think from their playbook. They claim the same with their constitution. We hear it is being violated. Government asserts there is in fact a debate amongst experts on whehter this really happens. Then we look into that and there indeed is a handful of professors arguing for the government versus whole faculties of law issuing condemnations together with every bar association and the judges. In this case I've heard that major opinion for the government was prepared by an forestry expert whose lifelong expertise is in chainsaw mechanics with no standing in biology community, whereas Nature regularly publishes alarmed letters from experts in actual ecology of outbreaks.
- kgabis 9y agoThis title is false and clickbaity. Puszcza Białowieska is definitely not on "brink of collapse". Please take a look at http://www.lasy.gov.pl/information/all-about-bialowieza-forest/10-facts-about-the-bialowieza-primeval-forest http://www.lasy.gov.pl/information/all-about-bialowieza-fore....