The Polish government has refuted environmentalist claims that it has put the country’s Bialowieza Forest under threat from exessive logging.
The government says that it has lifted a ban on felling trees more than a century old in order to help control a beetle infestation. It maintains that the trees felled will either be those actually affected by the pest, or others that need to be removed to create a quarantine zone around infested areas.
Green groups have implied that the government move is a smokescreen to disguise an opening up of old forest to commercial logging. One group has said that up to 1.5 million trees will be felled by logging companies in the next 10 years .
Logging is banned within two areas of Bialowieza – a Unesco world heritage site covering 5,000ha and a national park stretching to 10,000ha.
The government says its policies are designed to protect the forest and without logging a far greater number of trees than those it is allowing to be felled will be destroyed by the infestation.
