Journalists Proposed To Head Of Un Representative Office
To Arrange Join Press-Tour To Belovezhskaya Pushcha

Minsk, January 4.

Twelve journalists of Belarusian and Russian media addressed to Head of UN representative office in Belarus Neil Bune with proposal to organize join press-tour to Belovezhskaya Pushcha National Park. "This letter, - they write - we address, assuming our civil and professional duty - to know the truth in order to write the truth. This talk is about the object of World Human Heritage - biosphere reserve "Belovezhskaya Pushcha".

In this appeal emphasized, "Belovezha Forest is under threat of planned, directory and hard exploitation. Logs harvesting has been increasing year-to-year. It expressively states becoming more like an industrial forest about dominating vandal tendencies in Pushcha instead of nature conserving what is assigned by status of conserving nature which National Park and legal norms".

Journalists say that Belarusian media, mainly non governmental, was describing the tense situation in Belovezha quite often during the last two years. It was taken due to attempts to stop the industrial pressure on Belovezhskaya Pushcha, which is the oldest natural forest in Europe. "However leaders of the National Park and state authorities, which are responsible for ecological security of the state and implementing several UN conventions, they are ignore the voice of the public and answering on critique even with more hard exploitation of reserve resources" - said in the appeal.

Its authors propose to arrange the 3-days press-tour to Belovezhskaya Pushcha in the near future with participation of representatives of the public and scientists. They propose to take a press conference or "round-table" on the objects of ancient forest destroying. Journalists ask Neil Bune join to this combined action, "to become its full right organizer and competent participant".

The appeal was signed by such well known journalists as Tatiana Antonova ("Trud" Newspaper), Valery Dranchuk ("Belovezhskaya Pushcha"), Marina Zagorskaya ("Belaruskaya Delovaya Gazeta"), Anatoly Kozlovich ("Narodnaya Volya"), Oleg Karpovich ("Svobodnye Novosti Plus"), Anna Sous' ("Radio Svoboda"), Aleksandr Xalimon ("Komsomolskaya Pravda"), Veronika Cherkasova ("Belaruskaya Gazeta") and some others.

Making comments to BelaPAN about this appeal, the editor-in-chief of "Belovezhskaya Pushcha" Newspaper Valery Dranchuk noted: "We would like journalists together with scientists and public representatives to see the problems of the ancient and unique forest at the scene of it, to hear the reply on own questions and to write the truth. After all, the big scale industrial harvesting of elite ancient forest is going on in Belovezhskaya Pushcha. Among fired employees of the National Park, who lost their positions due to their consistent and principal viewpoint, there are lot of remarkable specialists and scientists, real patriots of Pushcha. This is some kind of force already which was absent before".

Marat Gorevoy, BelaPAN.
BelaPAN Company
News communique
January 4, 2003 #2