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).