Work on the construction of electronic security is underway on the Bug River border with Belarus. The first reports and photos from the river outraged naturalists and part of the public opinion. Because the Bug is largely a wild, natural river that has great natural value. And the works devastate its shores, including even nature reserves.
We asked the Regional Directorate for Environmental Protection in Lublin about the activities carried out on behalf of the services.
There are doubts, but there is little that can be done
In response to our questions, RDOŚ spokesman Cezary Wierzchoń informed, among others, that employees of the directorate, together with the local forest district, conducted field visits in the “Szwajcaria Podlaska” nature reserve. The cutting of trees there caused great outrage due to the fact that the reserves protect the absolutely most valuable natural parts of the place and no harmful interference – and certainly not cutting down trees and crushing them with heavy equipment – should have occurred.
The RDOŚ spokesman stated that “works on the Polish-Belarusian border are intensive, which results in losses to the natural environment.” As he wrote
The scale of losses shown in the photos during the works raises concerns of GDOŚ and RDOŚ in Lublin.
We were also informed that “natural compensations” are planned, and the Regional Director for Environmental Protection, “understanding the need to ensure the security of the state border, cooperates with the Border Guard to minimize the impact on the environment.”
The problem is that RDOŚ, like all other state institutions, has lost almost all the powers they have for normal investments. It was taken from them by the adopted party PISand now used by government Donald Tusk's act on the construction of state border security.
Pursuant to this Act, other regulations do not apply to work on the construction of border security: environmental protection law, spatial planning regulations and others. You do not need to have a permit or even a construction notification, you do not need to prepare a formal design, and there are no environmental decisions or permits required. The only thing RDOŚ can do is issue its recommendations – which was done in June this year.
These recommendations included, among others: carrying out felling and other works in valuable areas under environmental supervision, “sparing use of the area” and securing the roots of trees not intended for felling.
Further natural losses can be expected. Deputy Minister of Climate and Environment and Chief Nature Conservator Mikołaj Dorożała he wrote recently that “a lot of environmental dramas and images that take away hope await us there on the eastern border.” He assured that he was talking to the ministries of defense and interior and working on “creating a recovery plan.”
Ground razor wire
A striking example of actions that look not only harmful, but even thoughtless, was shown by prof. Michał Żmihorski. The director of the Institute of Mammal Biology of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Białowieża and a member of the State Council for Nature Conservation is personally observing the situation on the Bug River.
As he recalled, previously a mesh fence and razor wire had been placed along the Bug River to make crossing the border there more difficult (it is worth noting that there are much fewer attempts to cross the border on the river than on land – this year that was it less than 400 people).
Żmihorski wrote that “everything indicates that before the current construction of the monitoring belt began, the existing barrier was not rolled up, but heavy equipment drove directly into the mentioned mesh and razor wire entanglements.”
As a result, in many places we visited, the existing partition made of mesh and wire was “ground” by the caterpillars of excavators, the posts were bent with heavy equipment, the concertina formed tangles with the branches of the cut down trees that lie on the shore, some of these wires fell into the Bug, some were covered with earth from excavations and will only be washed away by flood waters.
The photos he published show fragments of mesh and razor wire lying in the water in the river bed, corroding and mixed with branches. The scientist expects that in spring it will all be overgrown with dense vegetation and “we will never remove this pollution from the Bug valley again.” Not only animals will suffer from this, for whom the wire mixed with vegetation will be an even more dangerous trap than before.
In his opinion, this is the same danger for people who will patrol the border and work to maintain the lane of monitoring devices:
I also can't imagine mowing vegetation (and this will certainly be necessary if the cameras are to see something other than regrowing willows and maples) when there is a razor wire hidden in it – anyone who has ever operated a combustion brushcutter knows how dangerous this situation is.
We have sent questions to the Border Guard about leaving razor wire in the river area and are waiting for an answer.