Belovezhskaya Pushcha National Park history · History of Belovezhskaya Pushcha National Park
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History of Belovezhskaya Pushcha National Park
History of Belovezhskaya Pushcha National Park
The Belaya Vezha Forest (Puszcza) has been known as a protected area since the 15 century when the Grand Dukes of Lithuania turned it into their hunting resort. The Polish kings who took over the forest continued the exploitation of the Forest resources conducting particularly large-scale hunting tours. They also established a number of factories that produced tar and tar oil.
Logging started in the late 16 century and at the same time royal edicts were issued aiming to preserve the population of bisons (zubr) and other species. In 1795 Katherine the Great allowed to hunt all animals except for zubr and very soon the population of many species decreased while bears and beavers were totally exterminated. Bialowieza Puszcza was divided into areas that were given to high-ranking Russian officials. A devastating fire of 1811 and the Russian-French War of 1812 affected the forest, too.
In 1888 Bialowieza Puszcza became a property of the Tsar Family and the hunting activities were stepped up. A hunting palace was built in Bialowieza Town (nowadays a Polish territory).
During the First World War the German occupants established several timber works to cut precious types of trees and built about 300 kilometers of narrow-gauge railroad to facilitate the logging. As a result, 4,5m cubic meters of trees were transported to Germany - about the same volume as had been produced in the forest since the 16 century.
In 1939 the Soviet authorities that took over Western Belarus established a State Reserve. The second German occupation during the WWII didn't harm the forest much because Hermann Goering, a close associate of Hitler, wanted to turn it into a model hunting reserve of the Third Reich.
After the WWII the new Soviet-Polish border divided the Bialowieza Puszcza into a Polish and a Belarusian parts. The latter was converted into a hunting reserve for the top ranks of the Communist Party in 1957. The secrecy kept the wide masses away and contributed to the development of the flora and fauna. Guest infrastructure was built and developed over the years.
In 1991 the Hunting Reserve was reorganized into the State National Park Belovezhskaya Puschcha. A year later it was included into the UNESCO World Heritage List.
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Belovezhskaya Pushcha National Park Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.