The Polish border with Belarus, on the eastern edge of the EU, may not seem an obvious holiday destination but there, largely unknown to British travellers, lie two amazing destinations for nature lovers. Białowieża forest, which straddles the border, is the last extensive stretch of the primeval forest that once covered all of north-east Europe, while, 100km to the north, the Biebrza marshes are among the continent’s most important wetlands.
These two national parks are almost the only places where Europe’s original landscape and wildlife can be seen. But Białowieża forest has become a new kind of front line, between environmentalists and the Polish government, which this week gave the go-ahead to large-scale logging.
Wild bison, which once roamed the continent, are now found only in Białowieża (around 300 on the Polish side; 500 in Belarus) along with 58 other species of mammals, including wolves and lynx. While almost 142,000 hectares are a Unesco world heritage site (stretching over both countries), the forest extends much further, and it’s in these unprotected parts that the controversy about logging rages, with fears of wider impact on the region’s wildlife.
In the past, UK visitors to the area were mainly birdwatchers, but several companies now cater for people interested in travelling to wild places, especially those where top predators still roam. I joined a seven-night spring trip with Wild Poland, led by its founder, Łukasz Mazurek, naturalist and author of the definitive guide to wildlife in the forest.
This is a trip for early birds: we set out from Wejmutka manor hotel, a traditional wooden guesthouse, at 4am. Łukasz took us to the forest edge, where we watched bison emerge, somewhat timidly for such mighty beasts, from the mist – a primitive cave painting come to life.
Visitors enter the protected forest through a high wooden gate on which Steven Spielberg modelled his entrance to Jurassic Park. Once inside, initial resemblances to English woodland dissolve. This untouched forest is dominated by oak, lime, bog alder and hornbeam. Much of the area is swampy and feels mysterious, especially when we spot black storks skulking in dark pools. Three wolf packs live here too, and Łukasz quickly found fresh prints and distinctively rank-smelling faeces.
This area has never been exploited or managed, and a unique feature is the dead wood decomposing into the forest floor. It looks picturesque, with moss and flowers covering fallen trunks, and voles scampering along them, but it is also key to the forest’s exceptional biodiversity: the dead wood hosts millions of organisms, which in turn sustain incredible numbers of, often rare, birds. Numerous species of woodpeckers, flitting about and drumming on the trunks, are entirely dependent on standing dead trees.
But outside the strictly-protected zone, state-employed foresters are still busily logging, and have successfully campaigned to be allowed to greatly increase felling and clearing dead wood in a bid to fight bark beetle infestation. Environmentalists would like to see the whole forest protected: dead wood is key to its ecology, and birds and other wildlife move around, and depend on, the whole forest, not just the protected area.
A trip to Białowieża can be combined with spectacular Biebrza marshes two hours’ drive away. The Biebrza and Narew rivers form a mystical, watery landscape of meandering waterways, vast reed beds and flooded fields. Distant shapes on the horizon resolve into groups of elk or huge flocks of cranes.
You need wellies here for walks through flooded fields, forests of alder swamps and peat bogs where a stick disappears up to two metres. You need torches, too, for nighttime spotting of fire-bellied toads or beavers on the banks of the Narew. These mammals are present in large numbers and it’s easy to watch by torchlight as they go about their slightly bonkers-looking business.
As in Białowieża, accommodation is in simple guesthouses aimed at walkers and wildlife watchers. We stayed at comfortable Dwór Dobarz. To describe its food as hearty is an understatement. The breakfast spreads provide your daily calorie count in one go, but are irresistible – fresh bread, cheeses and endless varieties of sausage. Traditional evening meals are big on wild mushrooms and stuffed cabbage. Most of it is organic because areas like this never became otherwise.
Like Białowieża, Biebrza has astonishing biodiversity: again there are lynx and several wolf packs, and a strong chance of seeing them. The iconic animal here is the elk, which are hard to miss: we stumbled across a new calf. Rather comically for an already comic beast, elk calves are born bright orange.
Biebrza is another bird lovers’ paradise: each evening our group of seven would bond over vodka and bird lists. White storks nest on village houses and are abundant in fields, bitterns boom continuously, and corncrakes and ruffs are common. Europe’s rarest passerine bird, the aquatic warbler, has its only stronghold here – and with novice twitcher’s luck, I caught a glimpse.
If you tire of wildlife, there’s plenty of (rather dark) history in eastern Poland, including Treblinka concentration camp, its rail tracks disappearing into forest. Białystok city was once mostly Jewish and has a ghetto heritage trail. Villages are mostly Belarusian-style, with houses made of wood.
Conservationists are keen to develop sustainable tourism here, to help locals realise the value of their environment. Their case couldn’t be more urgent. There aren’t many places to glimpse Europe’s wild past.
• The trip was provided by Wild Poland (wildpoland.com), whose seven-day spring birds and mammals tour costs about £785pp, starting in Warsaw and including transport, accommodation, meals, guide and permits
