Culturally modified trees or wasted timber: Different approaches to marked trees in Poland’s Białowieża Forest

Studies of past forest use traditions are crucial in both understanding the present state of the oldest European forests, and in guiding decisions on future forest conservation and management. Current management of Poland’s Białowieża Forest (BF), one of the best-preserved forests of the European lowlands, is heavily influenced by anecdotal knowledge on forest history. Therefore, it is important to gain knowledge of the forest’s past in order to answer questions about its historical administration, utilisation, and associated anthropogenic changes. Such understanding can then inform future management. This study, based on surveys in Belarussian and Russian archives and a preliminary field survey in ten forest compartments of Białowieża National Park, focuses on culturally-modified trees (CMTs), which in this case are by-products of different forms of traditional forest use. Information about the formation of the CMTs can then be used to provide insight into former forest usage. Two types of CMTs were discovered to be still present in the contemporary BF. One type found in two forms was of 1) pine trees scorched and chopped in the bottom part of the trunk and 2) pine trees with carved beehives. A second type based on written accounts, and therefore known to be present in the past (what we call a ‘ghost CMT’), was of 3) lime-trees with strips of bark peeled from the trunk. Written accounts cover the period of transition between the traditional forest management (BF as a Polish royal hunting ground, until the end of the eighteenth century) and modern, “scientific” forestry (in most European countries introduced in the second half of the nineteenth century). These accounts document that both types of CMTs and the traditional forest uses responsible for their creation were considered harmful to “rational forestry” by the nineteenth-century forest administration. Thus the practices which created CMTs were banned and the trees gradually removed from the forest. Indeed, these activities drew the attention of forest administrators for several decades, and in our view delayed the introduction of new, timber-oriented, forest management in the BF

Evolution of European bison image and its implications for current species conservation

Funding Information: Research conducted in the frames of the project “Perception of European bison and primeval forest in the 18th-19th century: shared cultural and natural heritage of Poland and Lithuania” (UMO-2017/27/L/HS3/031870) financed by National Science Centre, Poland (https://www. ncn.gov.pl/en) and grant S-LL-18-6 financed by the Research Council of Lithuania (https://www.lmt.lt/ en). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Authors wish to thank the group of European bison specialists that agreed to evaluate the anatomical accuracy of historical depictions of European bison (prof. dr hab. Małgorzata Krasińska and dr hab. Rafał Kowalczyk from Mammal Research Institute, Polish Academy of Sciences in Białowieża, dr Katarzyna Daleszczyk and dr Zbigniew Krasiński from the Białowieża National Park, and doctor of veterinary medicine Jarosław Tomana from Pszczyna). Publisher Copyright: © 2023 Samojlik et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Visual media are one of the fastest and most effective tools informing the public about conservation goals and convincing societies to support conservation actions. Similar mechanisms functioned in the past, only within a much longer time scale and different communication channels. We analyse the evolution of European bison’s depictions between 1500 and 1900 in the context of building public awareness of the species and its conservation needs. Experts evaluated the anatomical accuracy of thirty eight images of the species from the period analysed, and their conservation appeal was assessed by using an online survey of the general public. Existing knowledge and previous publications allowed authors to describe the development of the scientific knowledge about European bison in 1500–1900. By juxtaposing this with anatomical accuracy of depictions, a conclusion was reached that the accuracy of depictions was not directly linked to the state of knowledge about the species. In the survey, the public reception of the accuracy of historical pictures of European bison, as well as their potential to be used in conservation campaigns, was connected with subjective appeal of depicted animals. This lesson can be translated to modern conservation campaigns using mass media and global communication channels: popularization of knowledge on species of concern should be accompanied by appealing depictions of these species to strengthen public reception.Peer reviewe

Puszcza Białowieska : miniprzewodnik naukowy

"Dzisiejsza roślinność Puszczy jest wynikiem procesów ekologicznych, które kształtowały ją od schyłku ostatniego zlodowacenia, kiedy ocieplenie klimatu umożliwiło rozwój ekosystemów leśnych na tym terenie. Około 12 tysięcy lat temu rozprzestrzeniły się tu lasy sosnowo-brzozowe, a następnie kolejno przybywały inne gatunki drzew, które wędrowały z cieplejszych rejonów Europy, gdzie przetrwały okres zlodowacenia. Stopniowo wzbogacały one tutejsze lasy i powodowały ich zróżnicowanie w zależności od warunków siedliskowych. Do pierwszych przybyszów, po sośnie i brzozie, należały wiąz i leszczyna, a między ok. 9300 a 3800 lat temu miał miejsce najbujniejszy rozwój wielogatunkowych, mieszanych lasów liściastych." (fragm.

Ludwik Abramowicz’s collection of article clippings on the Białowieża Forest at the Wróblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences

A collection of article clippings about the Białowieża Primeval Forest from the periodicals and books published over the period from the mid-19th to the early 20th century, compiled by the Polish journalist, bibliographer and editor Ludwik Abramowicz (1879–1939), was detected at the Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences. The purpose of this article is to provide a brief description of this collection, to introduce the reader to the authors of the clipped-out articles, the periodicals in which they were published as well as to their contents, and thus to reveal the signifi cance of this collection in the context of science history

Białowieża Primeval Forest and the European bison in the journal “Łowiec Polski” in 1899–1939

The article, based on a detailed query in the archival issues of “Łowiec Polski” from 1899 to 1939, shows the perception of the bison and the Białowieża Primeval Forest among the authors and readers of this periodical. The founder and first editor-in-chief of the magazine was Jan Sztolcman, a naturalist best known for his crucial role in saving the European bison. Among the collaborators of the magazine were the best naturalists of that period, so the subject matter undertaken in its papers was much broader than just strictly hunting. This article discusses issues related to the Białowieża Primeval Forest and its most valuable inhabitant (European bison) presented in the journal from the perspective of nature conservation, old hunting traditions, the search for the last free-living European bison in the Białowieża Primeval Forest, European bison breeding in Pszczyna, international efforts to rescue the European bison, monographs about the species published in the inter-war period, issues of European and American bison hybridisation, and finally, the return of the European bison to the Białowieża Primeval Forest. The journal was examined for the first time from the point of view of the history of natural sciences. Analysis of the content of the journal, often unpublished elsewhere, makes “Łowiec Polski” one of the most important sources of information about the European bison and the Białowieża Primeval Forest during this period

Stanislaw Batys Gorski's botanical research in the Bialowieza Primeval Forest during the 1820s

The first scientific description of the flora of the Bialowieza Primeval Forest (Puszcza Bialowieska) was published in 1829 in Stanislaw Batys Gorski's paper "O roslinach Zubrom upodobanych, jakotez innych w puszczy Bialowiezkiey [About preferred plants of the European bison and other plants from the Bialowieza Primeval Forest]". This publication comprised the first critical evaluation of the plant species present in the forest based on several field surveys during 1822, 1823 and 1826 by Gorski, and it dismissed the popular hypothesis that the European bison (Bison bonasus) survived there because some of its preferred forage plants were exclusively found in the forest. To assess the importance of Gorski's contribution to studies on the flora of the Bialowieza Primeval Forest, we critically evaluated all his materials on the topic, including manuscripts, plant specimens collected by Gorski now preserved in Vilnius University Herbarium and his published works, and also traced all mentions and references to Gorski's studies in later botanical works devoted to the Bialowieza Primeval Forest