Poland's construction of border barriers threatens existence of European bison - Belarusian Foreign Ministry

MINSK. March 10 (Interfax) - Poland's construction of border barriers on the border with Belarus threatens the existence of European bison, the Belarusian Foreign Ministry said.

"Poland's actions of constructing a fence on the border with Belarus are repeatedly threatening the existence of European bison. The artificial barrier will inevitably result in the isolation of population groups and the depletion of the gene pool of European bison as the most genetically vulnerable species. After its extinction in the wild and artificial restoration, the genetic diversity of the bison population in Belovezhskaya Pushcha is already low, the fence creates an additional threat," the Belarusian Foreign Ministry said on Friday.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the restoration of the European bison population, the decision on it was made at the First International Congress for the Protection of Nature in Paris in 1923, it said. At that time, there were 52 purebred European bison left in the world, and they became the founders of the modern population. The work to restore the European bison population in the Bialowieza Forest began in 1929. Belarus currently has the highest free-living European bison population in the world, according to records of 2022, about 1,400 European bison lived in the Bialowieza Forest.

"If no resolute action is taken now, it is quite likely that in two decades, the International Congress will have to be convened and the process of the restoration of the population of European bison will have to begin again," the Belarusian Foreign Ministry said.

Poland began constructing a barrier on the border with Belarus in January 2022. According the Polish Border Guard Service, 39,700 people from Belarus attempted to enter Poland illegally in 2021 and 15,600 people in 2022.

Poland finished building its fence in late June 2022. The barrier is a steel fence topped with a barbed wire, it is 186 kilometers long and 5.5 meters high. Representatives of Belarus's Belovezhskaya Pushcha National Park pointed out that the length of the fence passing over the park's territory is about 64 kilometers.

The Bialowieza Forest is the largest remaining part of the relict primeval woodland that once stretched across almost the entirety of Europe in prehistoric times. At present, it remained relatively intact only in the Bialowieza area in the territory of modern Belarus and Poland.

In 2014, the World Heritage Committee by its decision recognized Belovezhskaya Pushcha as a single cross border UNESCO World Heritage site on an area of over 140,000 hectares with the buffer zone of about 166,000 hectares and named it the Bialowieza Forest, Belarus, Poland.