Culturally modified trees or wasted timber: Different approaches to marked trees in Poland’s Białowieża Forest

Abstract

Studies of past forest use traditions are crucial in both understanding the present state of the oldest European forests, and in guiding decisions on future forest conservation and management. Current management of Poland’s Białowieża Forest (BF), one of the best-preserved forests of the European lowlands, is heavily influenced by anecdotal knowledge on forest history. Therefore, it is important to gain knowledge of the forest’s past in order to answer questions about its historical administration, utilisation, and associated anthropogenic changes. Such understanding can then inform future management. This study, based on surveys in Belarussian and Russian archives and a preliminary field survey in ten forest compartments of Białowieża National Park, focuses on culturally-modified trees (CMTs), which in this case are by-products of different forms of traditional forest use. Information about the formation of the CMTs can then be used to provide insight into former forest usage. Two types of CMTs were discovered to be still present in the contemporary BF. One type found in two forms was of 1) pine trees scorched and chopped in the bottom part of the trunk and 2) pine trees with carved beehives. A second type based on written accounts, and therefore known to be present in the past (what we call a ‘ghost CMT’), was of 3) lime-trees with strips of bark peeled from the trunk. Written accounts cover the period of transition between the traditional forest management (BF as a Polish royal hunting ground, until the end of the eighteenth century) and modern, “scientific” forestry (in most European countries introduced in the second half of the nineteenth century). These accounts document that both types of CMTs and the traditional forest uses responsible for their creation were considered harmful to “rational forestry” by the nineteenth-century forest administration. Thus the practices which created CMTs were banned and the trees gradually removed from the forest. Indeed, these activities drew the attention of forest administrators for several decades, and in our view delayed the introduction of new, timber-oriented, forest management in the BF.

Białowieża Forest—A Relic of the High Naturalness of European Forests

“…The Russian administration introduced a strict policy against fire, and banned potash and charcoal burning, construction of river dams and fish ponds, and extraction of bog iron ore. Traditional forest bee-keeping was gradually converted to household bee-keeping, and finally prohibited in the traditional form in 1888 [152,153]. Haymaking and forest livestock pasturing continued but was limited to the areas in the direct vicinity of villages [154], however, cattle grazing still had a significant negative effect on forest regeneration [155][156][157].…”

“…The Russian administration attempted to introduce large-scale logging, yet their efforts were limited and eventually marred by the lack of roads and conflict with the priority given to conservation of European bison [153,158]. In effect, although forest taxation was carried out and the forest was divided into compartments (in 1843-1846), timber exploitation was limited and interspersed with prolonged periods of prohibition on felling [143,159].…”

“…At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, BF ecosystems were significantly affected by high densities of game populations [46]. After the first tsar's hunt in 1860, BF was gradually transformed into an imperial game reserve, and in 1888 the entire BF became the private property of the tsar's family [152,153]. The new management aimed at maximizing game numbers through the extirpation of predators, supplementary feeding of game for up to six months per year in hundreds of feeding sites, the reintroduction of red deer (extinct in the 17th-18th century), and the introduction of alien fallow deer Dama dama L. and Siberian roe deer Capreolus pygargus Pallas [152,153,161].…”

“…After the first tsar's hunt in 1860, BF was gradually transformed into an imperial game reserve, and in 1888 the entire BF became the private property of the tsar's family [152,153]. The new management aimed at maximizing game numbers through the extirpation of predators, supplementary feeding of game for up to six months per year in hundreds of feeding sites, the reintroduction of red deer (extinct in the 17th-18th century), and the introduction of alien fallow deer Dama dama L. and Siberian roe deer Capreolus pygargus Pallas [152,153,161]. The high density of ungulates had tremendous impact on tree recruitment, changing the proportion of tree species [162].…”

Faces in the Wilderness: a New Network of Crossdated Culturally-Modified Red Pine in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness of Northern Minnesota, USA

“…Networks of documented CMTs developed around the world have been used to examine historical, social, and economic responses to changing environmental, cultural, and technological conditions. Identification of the timing of these modifications through tree-ring analysis of the associated cambial scars has provided insight into periods of food scarcity, seasonal patterns of food gathering, historical travel routes, and periods of cultural change (e.g., Swetnam 1984;Mobley and Eldridge 1992;Zackrisson et al 2000;Östlund et al 2005;Morrison and Shepard 2013;Östlund et al 2015;Samojlik et al 2019).…”