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| Home | News | Photo | Belovezhskaya Pushcha: Journey to Europe’s oldest forest

Belovezhskaya Pushcha National Park

Belovezhskaya Pushcha National Park
25 Jul 2020

The coronavirus pandemic has redefined the global tourism industry. An opportunity to keep social distancing while traveling has become an important part of people’s considerations. Thus, now tourists tend to choose destinations with a lot of space and fresh air; they also show increasingly environmentally friendly behavior. In this context, what can be a better destination than Europe’s biggest primeval forest, the legendary Belovezhskaya Pushcha. In the 2020 summer season the national park drew a lot of domestic tourists and foreign travelers for whom Belarusian border always remained open.

Belovezhskaya Pushcha is a priceless natural assess of the planet. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It has preserved huge areas of Europe’s virgin forest that used to spread from the Baltic Sea up to the Bug River and from the Oder to the Dnieper. In the 15th century it was a bison hunting ground for Grand Duke and the King of Poland Jahajla. A century later poet Mikola Gusovsky wrote his famous song about the bison admiring the power of the animal that is now in the List of Endangered Species of Belarus.

By the early 20th century the number of bison, the last representatives of Europe’s wild buffalo, shrank to 12! It took decades to restore their population. In 2018 Belarus posted the world’s biggest number of European bison living in the wild, or 40% of the global bison population. The majority of them can be found in Belovezhskaya Pushcha.

Today, Belovezhskaya Pushcha spans the territory of two states - Belarus and Poland and has the highest protection status. The Belarusian National Park Belovezhskaya Pushcha occupies an area of 150,083 hectares. According to the latest data, the park is home to 604 bison, 260 elk, more than 1,100 roe deer and 2,600 reindeer. The population of wild boars numbers 80 animals, that of foxes - 330, wolves - 70, otters - 100. Rivers, lakes and wetlands, which have the status of a Ramsar site, are of particular importance for the conservation of fauna. For example, the Dikoye wetland is the habitat for 140 species of birds, 39% of which have the international or national protection status.

The Museum of Nature at the main entrance of the national park gives the first idea of how diverse the flora and fauna of Belovezhskaya Pushcha are. It offers tours in Russian, English and German. There are also audio guides in Russian, English, German and French.

The National Park Belovezhskaya Pushcha is part of the Brest-Grodno tourist zone that offers 15-day visa-free access for citizens of dozens of countries.

On picture: Nature Museum in Belovezhskaya Pushcha

Belovezhskaya Pushcha National Park
Belovezhskaya Pushcha National Park
Belovezhskaya Pushcha National Park
Belovezhskaya Pushcha National Park
Belovezhskaya Pushcha National Park
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