Zubr!

From September to November 2013 I spent 9 weeks working in conservation in Bialowieza, Poland. What follows is partly scientific but mainly a travel log of my experiences in a fascinating part of the world. All photographs my own.

The Placement

Bialowieza is in north-eastern Poland – a very short distance from the border with Belarus – and I had heard about it before my placement as being remarkable for its primeval forest habitat. The forest has been a national park since 1921 and is both a Biosphere Reserve and UNESCO World Heritage Site, as well as containing traces of human settlement dating back thousands of years. The forest is home to bison (the 'Zubr' of the title, as well as the local vodka, beer, hotels, tourist attractions...), deer, wild boar, wolves, moose, lynx, badgers, mustelids, mice and red squirrels amongst others, as well as being extremely diverse botanically and supporting populations of eagles, woodpeckers and jays. This diversity and ecological significance is because of the status of the forest in Bialowieza as ancient; forest management that suggests that ancient woodland can be replaced with new growth trees is groundless and dangerous.

 The village of Bialowieza is small and traditional, with many wooden cabin-style houses and a strong religious influence, situated right in the heart of the Bialowieza forest. Our Ambios EcoTrain placement (funded by the EU’s Leonardo Mobility Fund) had us working at the Mammal Research Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences. There were three of us from the UK on the programme, and I lived with two other interns, making us five in total.

The view down the biggest (and busiest!) street in Bialowieza from the top of the church tower.

The river Narewka – next to the Institute and something I cycled past every day on my way into the forest.

The Institute

The institute is one of the leading divisions of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Staff conduct a range of leading scientific research on topics from the environmental history of the forest, to the genetics of the forest’s bison population, to the life history and behaviours of the species of the forest, and the Institute publishes a journal (currently Acta Theriologica, but it's due to change name soon as per my understanding). The Institute is also home to a large zoological collection and hosts a range of presentations and lectures, some of which were in English. Whilst in Poland I heard about GIS from researchers from all over Europe and about the effects of bison on climate change from a member of staff from the University of Kansas. However, the best thing for me about being based at the Institute was the opportunity it gave us to conduct genuinely interesting work that contributed to the conservation of the forest and its inhabitants.

The gate into the Strict Reserve. Jurassic Park-esque?

Sunrise over Bialowieza during our marten tracking.

The work

Our work included several projects. The main task was the radio tracking of stone martens (closely related to the pine martens we have in the UK) and of bison. The radio tracking is carried out using a radio receiver that can be tuned to the frequencies of the collars of specific individuals, with a range of a kilometre or so, shortened by forest. The marten tracking took place in and around Bialowieza village, and we looked for bison in the Strict Reserve of the forest. The Strict Reserve can be accessed only with a pass from the Institute and the National Park which marks you out as a scientific researcher, and is completely unmanaged. This means that the forest has not been affected by human activity and so is far wilder, thicker and more interesting than many managed UK forests. We came across wild boar, deer and bison whilst carrying out our surveying work, and the forest in autumn is home to a huge array of fungi, which some of the bolder members of our group took home and ate from the areas in which mushroom collection is permitted. The marten surveying took place at night, as the martens are nocturnal. This meant we were out working as the sun rose over the village on a few occasions, as shown in the photo above!

We also had days in the office where we analysed camera trap data, looking for nocturnal marten activity, and proof read journal papers by non-native English speakers. We were given a great deal of flexibility – as we were working on several projects at once, we were given the work we needed to do and then left to do it according to our own timetables. This meant that if we had some camera traps to analyse but also wanted to look for bison, we could leave the office and do the analysis in our free time in the evening instead. We were also given the opportunity to involve ourselves in any additional work we wanted to do – our project was officially just the martens, but as we showed an interest in the bison we were provided with maps and passes and equipment to allow us to track them and add our data to the collated bison ranges also.

Something that particularly interests me is the future of conservation in Poland and Eastern Europe. I was aware that a number of conditions have to be met for EU membership, but I wasn’t fully aware of the conservation aspect of this until I had a conversation with Rafal Kowalczyk, the director of the Institute, about how he envisioned bison conservation in the future. He explained that if Ukraine does join the EU, it will hugely improve the chances of persistence and range expansion for bison into abandoned Ukrainian farmland that was deserted with the fall of the USSR (Kuemmerle et al., 2011). Range expansion and ideally the coming together of different bison populations would help address a significant issue - despite the bison being protected in Poland, their genetic diversity is poor, coming as they do from 7 founding individuals; mixing with other populations would ameliorate this problem. Rewilding of bison into Ukraine is currently considered too risky due to the poor legal protection for bison; this would change with EU membership. Great tracts of Romania, particularly the Carpathian mountains, are currently excellent prospective habitat for bison also. Bison prefer open grassland away from humans – whilst the typical image of the bison in Bialowieza was of it amongst the trees, this is actually marginal bison habitat (Kuemmerle et al., 2010; Kerley, Kowalczyk & Cromsigt, 2012). Therefore, the symbolic importance of the continuing survival of the European bison as a flagship species that is potentially currently sustained by forest refugia is hugely bound up not only in ecological and on-the-ground conservation concerns, but also in political and social concerns also. 

An autumn leaf falling in the Strict Reserve.

Because the forest is unmanaged, dead trees are left standing.

Free time

Whilst the work was sometimes tiring (cycling 20-odd miles through often treacherous terrain) we were also given plenty of free time. Our budgets allowed us to go for a weekly interns pizza at a local pizza restaurant, which was a really nice tradition, and the village is also home to a range of restaurants which while very classy and upmarket were still extremely cheap by British standards. The MRI staff were extremely keen to involve us in anything we showed an interest in – for example, encouraging me to play volleyball (very popular!) with them and then being extremely patient when as a beginner I was utterly hopeless… We were also taken to the top of a church tower when we asked if we might be allowed up, giving us the views over Bialowieza shown in the first picture of this report. MRI staff also took the time to have conversations with us about their work when we showed an interest. For instance, I spoke with several members of staff about their research, from rewilding of European bison to the forest under Nazi occupation and they were all extremely generous with their time and insights. 

Most afternoons and evenings, we were sat in Walizka, a lovely café/bar on the main street (Waskiewicza) which I would strongly recommend to anyone in Bialowieza! We also went on walks and went bison tracking at weekends, as well as visiting the supermarket in nearby Hajnowka, and visited the ‘show reserve’ (essentially a zoo for species in the forest; given that we had seen most of them in the wild we were a little spoiled..!) and walked on an old boardwalk through a part of forest, which as the image below shows was in a slight state of disrepair. Through the church visit and the multiple restaurant and bar visits, as well as being fortunate enough to be in Poland for independence day, we also picked up some Polish and got some really fascinating insights into Polish culture.

A mushroom we found in the forest - easily bigger than my head!

The Zebra Zubr, or Bison's Ribs walkway (!) through the forest

I am terrible with heights, so getting up to the top of a churchtower that was made of slippery metal on top was quite an experience...

Mushrooms on an old tree stump in September - they had really started to die back when we left.

Personal highlights

Having looked at the work, the institute, talked about the forest a bit and what I got up to in my free time, I’m aware that there are far more detailed discussions of the incredible ecological significance and beauty of the forest available than I could produce here. Instead, I’ll just talk about some of my own personal highlights; the moments that made me realise what a wonderful opportunity I had been afforded.

1.    Monika, who runs the Walizka café, throwing us a Pimm’s party when she found out we were British, and having everyone sing happy birthday to me when I turned 21 on my placement. Sophie, Tom, Teun and Betty did everything to make sure that I had a brilliant day as well, which I really enjoyed! We also had a lovely meal/evening at Monika’s where we enjoyed the best of Polish food, drink and hospitality.

2.    Our supervisor on the bison project nearly crashing his bike into a tree in excitement when he thought he saw a bison. Despite having worked in the forest for nearly a decade, he was still fantastically passionate.

3.    The day we spent tracking bison on foot – about three hours of pantomime whispers rewarded with the sight of a bison family really close to us (and subsequent excitement meaning all my photos of it are pretty poor…)

4.    On cycling through the strict reserve tracking an old female bison, accidentally waking up a bison calf sleeping next to the path and watching it going running off in ungainly fashion to look for its mum.

5.    Standing alone in the forest on our last day, listening to the sounds and watching the falling leaves circling round my head, as well as the woodpecker keeping me company!

6.    The fact that on Polish banknotes from 10 to 50 PLN, the kings on the notes have increasingly impressive facial hair as the notes increase in value. The 100 PLN note bucks the trend – clearly confident enough that that king will be taken seriously despite being clean-shaven…

I will leave you with a final few of my favourite photos, with thanks to everyone from the UK, Holland, Germany and Poland who made the placement such a fantastic experience, and with encouragement to jump at the chance should you ever have the opportunity to visit and work in Bialowieza.

Our bikes on our last day in the forest - November, so the trees were pretty bare.

This horse near our fieldwork site in Nowa Wola had a crucial groundskeeper role.

Dotted through the strict reserve, these waymarkers give you unique coordinates that make navigation easy.

Cycling home from a busy day of bison tracking.

By Park standards, a huge road. The entrance to the strict reserve is just out of sight at the end. The sign reads Bialowieza National Park.

Dziekuje!

Alex

P.S. For anyone interested in the papers I cited (I know they’re not referenced properly but this should make them easy to find) they're below. All easy reading and very interesting:

Kerley, Kowalczyk & Cromsigt, 2012. Conservation implications of the refugee species concept and the European bison: king of the forest or refugee in a marginal habitat? (Ecography)

Kuemmerle et al., 2010. European Bison habitat in the Carpathian Mountains (Biological Conservation)

Kuemmerle et al., 2011. Post-Soviet farmland abandonment, forest recovery, and carbon sequestration in western Ukraine (Global Change Biology).

Our Cycle to Paris

In which I cycle to Paris with my little brother Ewan, my mum and a hastily added Worcester College teddy bear on a bike older than me.


At some point over the last 6 months, my mum and little brother asked if I fancied cycling from London to Paris. I wasn't really listening and thought it sounded interesting, so naturally agreed. Suddenly, it was the 24th of July, I was nice and warm in my graduation gown and hood, and I was thinking about how I was setting off on this really quite long trip tomorrow. I wasn't sure what it would involve, but as someone whose cycling experience extends only to pretty basic mountain biking I was a bit worried... Our itinerary was aimed at novices, though, so how tough could it be?

Day One

With enthusiastic fanfare from the London drivers around us on Tower Bridge (encouragement, that's what that would have been) we set off on the 25th for the Eiffel Tower. A last minute addition was the Worcester College teddy bear who had accompanied me to graduation and had been sat in my room since Hilary; the photos of the trip show that clearly the camera loves him more and as such the vast majority are of him. The cycling was relaxing at first on Boris' 'superhighway', as we moved down through Greenwich (past the Cutty Sark), Deptford and out into the North Downs. The Downs were where it all got very picturesque (particularly around Caterham), quite hard work and much easier to get lost, which we took advantage of a few times. We finally managed to collapse into the B&B in East Grinstead at some silly hour having negotiated the night traffic with no lights but plenty of worrying.

Visiting the Cutty Sark. Notice the stylish jumper/badge coordination.

Day Two

Within a few miles of setting off from East Grinstead, Ewan managed to completely remove one of his pedals from the bike. This somewhat impressed the guy working at the bike shop which was luckily just round the corner, being not the 'get out of tiring cycling trip free' card Ewan seemed to be hoping it would be but rather an unusual but fairly routine problem. With that fixed, we pressed on for Newhaven and the South Coast. This was the hardest day for a few reasons. Inexperience in tackling the abundant hills, my decision to buy vast amounts of cheese and coke before we left in the morning making my panniers really quite heavy and the fact that when we arrived in Newhaven we bumped into someone who was planning to complete the whole trip in 24 hours. Armed with a rucksack of Sunny D and literally nothing else, he was a true adventurer for the modern age, and was doing it alone to prove a point to his mates. I really do hope he managed it. 

Despite these concerns, we stumbled across a lovely cafe in a part of the countryside whose name escapes me but put me in mind of how I imagine Hogsmeade. The final approach to Newhaven involved cycling through a field along a river, which was negotiated successfully largely through Ewan's innovative approach in getting heavily laden bikes through a tiny tree-covered kissing gate. Herculean. He also managed to take the prize for most successful and energetic hill climbing! We got onto the ferry in Newhaven at midnight, having weirdly arrived in daylight this time, and wisely elected not to think about whether we would be able to buy water in Dieppe when we got off at 5 the next morning.

Enjoying the view/saying literally anything to not have to get back on the bike for another minute

Day Three

Naturally we couldn't buy water anywhere. This coupled with a wake up time that I had previously thought to not be a real time (unless you're still awake from the night before right? right?) was not an encouraging start. However, once we hit the Avenue Verte in Dieppe and started making inroads into the French countryside it was brilliant. The Avenue Verte is essentially a waymarked path that takes you some of the distance towards Paris away from any roads, and as such was really easy, enjoyable cycling. We quickly covered a good distance (20 miles before breakfast!) and went right through a thunderstorm, so we even had water too..! There was also an opportunity for massive smug points when we stopped off to pick up breakfast and noticed some 'proper cyclists' (you know, with cycling clothes and expensive bikes and things - showoffs) who we had met on the ferry come in after us. Score. 

Ewan flies off into the French countryside. #nofilters!

Of particular note was the village of St Germer le Fly, with a pretty abbey and the opportunity to buy the biggest piece of bread I've ever seen. I'm not sure it was really supposed to be sold whole, but giving Ewan 20 Euros and carte blanche to buy whatever he wanted (translated, clearly, as 'buy whatever you think is funniest') ensured that the giant baguette was ours.

So pleased with himself

We arrived to our farmhouse stay for the night at Ferme les Peupliers, Dampierre, very tired and ready to sleep. Due to a heroic effort on Mum's part to cycle an extra 10 miles in a storm to get food (we did offer to go with her, really enthusiastically) we even had something to eat. A good end to a great first day in France.

Day Four

We headed off happy in the knowledge that the longest days had been completed, and that the most challenging of the cycling was over. We continued on through Normandy across the plateau of the Vexin region. Much of the cycling was over gently rolling hills, the sun was shining and there was a perfect breeze, making for excellent conditions.

The Vexin plateau opens out in front of us.

 One minor hitch was my pannier rack breaking off from my bike, meaning that my bags were dragged along the ground and a good portion of the back of the bike was no longer attached. In a display of rare skill at fixing something I managed to sort the situation with some 99p shop bungee cords bought back in East Grinstead, and accompanied at the time with a portentious 'just in case'. Just in case indeed! With this hiccup successfully negotiated we arrived at our accommodation for the evening in Breancon, in an old manor run by a very friendly art-loving lady. Ewan somehow managed to get himself out of doing any cooking whatsoever by quickly seizing on her interests and declaring himself to be an artist - while mum and I made tea he enjoyed a tour of her paintings and was sent outside to 'indulge his artistic interests'. The fact he actually produced a very good drawing is neither here nor there.

In front of the Manoir. One day they will visit this to see where Ewan got his first steps in the art world - I'm pretty sure he left the drawing there too.

Day Five

We got back on the bikes for another fairly short day of cycling. The weather continued to hold despite dire forecasts and working our way through the number of little villages and towns was really very enjoyable. The 99p shop bungees continued to work a charm, my plucky iPod shuffle was a revelation (despite having a knack for very apt song choices; plumping for Alkaline Trio's 'Help Me' as I struggled up a mountain quite small hill in a strong wind) and the miles melted away.

We bought huge amounts of Orangina in villages like this. It's good for you!

This day also marked our first sighting of the Seine. The end was in sight! Very exciting indeed. We arrived at the Campanile in Villennes Sur Seine after a lung-busting final climb in high spirits.

Morrices-sur-Seine, finalement

Day Six

Our final day began in strange circumstances as two huge coachloads of Japanese tourists came for breakfast at the Campanile at the same time as us. They displayed about the same level of confusion I imagine I would at a Japanese hotel's buffet breakfast - ie, complete confusion - and many just resorted to making their own instant noodles which they had genuinely brought along, clearly as a wise just-in-case measure. 

This was the best day of cycling - the first part of our route took us through the Foret de Saint-Germain and the Foret de Marly le Roi, both very beautiful parts of woodland with good bike tracks running through them en route to Versailles. Our route also took us past a nature conservation area, featuring a 'Hotel a Abeilles' (bee hotel) and some butterflies. Yes, I did take a picture despite the endless mocking I got (still get) for studying butterflies for my dissertation. 

Parc des Princesses

Our stop for the day was Versailles. Most of it is accessible by bike and you can see pretty much everything we wanted to see for free, so we sat by the lake and had lunch, trying not to seem insufferably smug when people asked where we had cycled from. We were moved on by a few drops of rain which I assumed foreshadowed a flood of biblical proportions, which I felt I would prefer to be indoors in Paris for. 

Versailles! Paris very close and I for one was getting quite excited.

After Versailles, we headed down through St Cloud, which was a personal favourite area for the trip as a whole. Great views of Paris out in front of us and downhill sections sufficiently exciting to ensure I didn't take any photos. It also came with a free pride check as my enthusiasm caused me to, for some reason, try to cycle over a speedbump with no hands at high speed and only narrowly avoid becoming the first person to fall off on our trip (something I couldn't believe nobody had done yet). After St Cloud we started to get into Paris proper, heading over an aqueduct designed by Eiffel and into Boulogne-Billancourt, the Bois de Boulogne and the Hippodrome. Even here, the traffic was fairly light as we managed to keep to the cycle paths through reasonably clear areas. All of a sudden, we came out onto Boulevard Delessert and across the bridge to the Eiffel Tower! We had made it! A brilliant day to end a fantastic trip to get to Paris, and something I would really strongly recommend to anyone. Donald Hirsch's resources were invaluable for the planning and execution of the trip - particularly in keeping us on lovely cycle paths for the duration (I say that as if I was any use in the planning) and can be found at http://www.donaldhirsch.com/dieppeparis.pdf.

Everyone, including the bear, successfully at the end of our journey!

 The first point of order was a crepe and a glass of champagne, before a wonderful few days spent exploring Paris, playing basketball with a ball we brought with us, catching up at the canal with old friends for dinner and a drink, visiting the excellent Paris plage, seeing some art galleries and testing the official 'best pain au chocolat in Paris'. I'm undecided - will have to go back some time to check! Our apartment had brilliant views over Paris and was an excellent spot to sit back and feel pleased with ourselves. If you're looking for a) a ridiculous tan (short sleeved tops and cycling gloves a great look) or b) a brilliant way to spend a few days, regardless of experience (it could definitely be done much quicker, and it was much easier once we got to France!) I wouldn't hesitate to suggest it to anyone. 

Fin!

With thanks to Richard, Anne, Ewan and Donald again,

Alex

View from the apartment as the sun sets on Paris/our day of glory..!