There is no fire in the Biebrza National Park, but there is still a fire of fire below the surface – this is the latest information provided by the Podlasie Voivode on Wednesday morning. “All services work, water screenshots are continued, the water bus works efficiently” – said voivode Jacek Brzozowski.
How informed Deputy Minister of the Environment Mikołaj Dorożała, the situation was improved by the rain, which fell on Tuesday evening. However – as the politician emphasized – the threat remains, and the peat bogs are “incredibly dried”.
The fire broke out on Sunday, April 20. Since then, he has covered about 450 hectares, mainly rushes and Brzezina. The fire took the edge of forests and marsh forests in the area of strict protection of the red swamp, but thanks to the efforts of the services the fire did not spread to this area – the authorities of the National Park informed. As emphasized, the red swamp is a unique swamp area on the scale of the whole country and one of the oldest protected areas in Poland. This is another fire in the park this year. In turn, five years ago there was a very large fire, which covered over 5,500 hectares.
About what makes the wetlands over Biebrza be burning once again, which it means for nature and whether the government actually works to protect such places, we asked prof. Wiktor Kotowski. He is a specialist in the protection of swamps and peat bogs, a professor at the Faculty of Biology at the University of Warsaw and co -founder of the Wetland Protection Center.
Patryk Strzałkowski: Once again, part of the Biebrza National Park is burning. How unusual are such wetland fires?
Prof. Wiktor Kotowski: The fire in wetlands is not something extraordinary yet. These are ecosystems with a lot of biomass and we know – thanks to the testing of peat cross -section – that such fires had previously occurred there. We also see on peat samples that fires have become more frequent than people settling.
Do we contribute to fires?
In several ways. This year's fire, like the one from five years ago and many of the previous ones, happened in the central part of the Biebrza valley. This is an area that has a very changed hydrology. These are the effects of activities carried out in the 19th century, construction of the Augustów Canal, tsarist times and enlargement of the drainage network during the Polish People's Republic. The effect we see today is that the drainage continues to drain water, and about half of the swamps in the national park is very dry.
The effects of climate change, another drought, overlap. Water level – especially in the central part of Biebrza – is the lowest in the history of measurements. But also on the best -preserved peat bogs, where the water is usually close to the surface of the soil, now it is located at a depth of the subway.
Finally, the burning of grass by humans is a direct threat explosion fire.
What does such a fire mean for nature?
On the one hand – there are a lot of animals on every peat bog or in the swamp meadow, which may suffer in such a fire. Adult birds will run away, but their chicks will not. But – if such fires are not very common – the ecosystem can regenerate quite quickly. Some birds may have a second breeding even in the same season; Insects will migrate from other areas, and some may survive such a surface fire. These were the observations after a fire from 2020.
Sounds calming.
But there are also more disturbing aspects. First of all – a fire is a danger to people. If the wetlands spread to the forests, began to approach the buildings, we would deal with a very dangerous situation for residents.
Secondly – if a fire of the above -ground vegetation is not something terrible for the ecosystem, if the peat fire happened, the situation would be much more serious.
Why?
Such a fire can last for weeks or even months and is very difficult to quench. Dry peat is burning perfectly – it was used as fuel for heating houses. Of course, he should not be able to light in the peat bog, because in swamp conditions it consists of 95 percent of the water. However, on peat bogs dehydrated by drainage, the upper layer of peat dries and can deal with fire.
What would the natural effects be in this case?
Such peat accumulates for thousands of years. Its burnout means the emission of a very large amount of dioxide rodand for the ecosystem it is a “reset” – the loss of what was created there for hundreds, and with a deep fire – even thousands of years.
Although the fire was gigantic in terms of surface five years ago, then fortunately there was no more peat fire on a larger scale. Windy weather made the fire spread quickly and did not stay in one place for a long time. Now the lack of wind and less spreading fire paradoxically increased the threat that the peat will light up. And the water level is even lower than then. In the 1990s, a peat caught fire in the area of the so -called Biebrza triangle. Now we are observing the gradual regeneration of this area. But the story of a hundred years written in peat was lost there. Ecosystems rebuild after disasters, but this is what a bog fire was – a disaster.
Can we reduce the risk of this disaster?
There are still drainage ditches over Biebrza, which should be either eliminated, or limited their operation through pledge water puffy to the ground level. It really doesn't make sense that dehydration systems operate within the wetlands national park.
However, many more such ditches are out of borders park. They affect the same peat bogs, which only on the map are separated by the borders of the park. In his buffer zone there is a lot of work to do with land owners. And the Ministry of Agriculture should grant the farmers to the farmers for reproduction of land hydration, building valves.
It can probably make an objection
But it doesn't have to mean abandoning these areas. Farmers can also use swamp soils, of course in a different way than drained. There is even a definition of such a farm – it is a paludicultura, i.e. marsh agriculture.
But in addition to the activities covering the park's buffer zone, we must also think about a large scale water management. For example, can we maintain higher water levels in the Augustów Canal? He is of course treated as a technique monument and a tourist attraction. But also works like a well, pulling water from the area. It is also necessary to further improve fire protection, quickly responding – which we have now seen, perhaps removing part of biomass by winter mowing rushes. And of course punishing for burning grass.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who was at the place of services, talked about punishments. But does the government do enough to protect wetlands like those on the Biebrza every day?
One hand yes, the other is not. On the one hand, we all remember Poland's opposition to the EU law on the reconstruction of natural resources (Nature Restoration Law – NRL), which largely applies to water resources, reproduction of wetlands and other ecosystems. The Polish government's opposition to him was completely surprising and going against the promises of the coalition (let us remind you that the NRL was saved by the minister of the Austria environment, voting somehow against the position of his government and prevailing the scales of support for this regulation). In turn, the Ministry of Agriculture has recently been active in the weakening of peat bog protection provisions in the EU common agricultural policy. I consider it a mistake, but fortunately, here I managed to develop a compromise after the opposition of the European Commission.
On the other hand, there are clear investments in water retention, especially in forests. It is hundreds of millions of zlotys from EU funds, which obtained the Center for Coordination of Environmental Projects in the State Forests (although this is the result of activities from previous years, so it is difficult to count as the successes of the current government as the success of the current government). But just as it is impossible to protect peat bogs in the National Park without action in its surroundings, it will be equally difficult to repair dehydrated peat bogs in forests without similar actions in adjacent agricultural areas. Everything is connected in the landscape. Therefore, playing landscape water retention is a task that requires cooperation between various ministries.