Defense of forests, greenery and nature is beginning to unite politicians of various options and social activists. In Poznan, councilors unanimously supported a draft resolution securing protective forests around the city. They also called for action to change the law in such a way as to better protect forests throughout the country. This is in response to the actions of the State Forests that are intensively cutting down trees near Poznań.
Increasingly intensive logging around Poznań mobilized Poznań residents, who prepared a social draft resolution to save valuable natural areas on the border of the city and neighboring municipalities. The document was prepared by social activists and activists from various associations and groups united in the "Moratorium for Forests Committee." More than a thousand people signed the social draft resolution (a minimum of 300 is required), and Poznan councilors supported the draft document last week - regardless of party affiliation. Interestingly, this is the first such social resolution to find the approval of Poznań councilors.
The document obliges the mayor of Poznań to undertake efforts that will protect Poznań's protective green belt from logging by the State Forests. The public stresses that the stand of trees surrounding the city is an excellent support of climate security for the city and an element of adaptation to climate change. Contrary to the opinion of foresters, they call for these forests to be subject to natural processes of nature - without intensive forest management. The urban aspect is also not without significance : the ring of forests around the city is connected to the so-called green wedges - very valuable green belts entering deeply (up to the borders of the city center) into the urban fabric of Poznan.
Bad use in use
The immediate reason for the reaction of social activists and councilors is the logging in the Darzybór ecological use in the east of the city. Foresters have already begun logging, and intend to cut down one-seventh of the trees (more than 50 hectares of the 350-acre use). Trees are also disappearing from other conservation areas surrounding the city along a strip as wide as 10 kilometers. The cutting in Darzybor is all the more galling because it is not a typical industrial forest, but more than a century-old old-growth forest consisting of fragments of mixed forest. In mid-January, activists measured the girth of some of the trees growing in Darzybor, commenting that they are not far short of the size of a natural monument.
national law needed!
What specifically is in the draft resolution? The document obliges the mayor to negotiate at the local level with the Regional Directorate of State Forests. The idea is to temporarily secure forests with protected status for the city of Poznan from logging as soon as possible. The second point of the moratorium calls for action by local government officials (in cooperation with scientists and parliamentarians) to draft legislative changes that will permanently secure the protective forests from timber management.
What could be the real effect of the resolution? The activities of the State Forests are not under the authority of the local government, so everything depends on the quality of the negotiations, to which Mayor Jacek Jaskowiak and his subordinate officials have been obliged. The determination of the councilors is high. Aware that the resolution in such a form may be lost in a higher instance (supervision by the governor), they have already prepared a contingency plan. In the event that the resolution is invalidated, they will vote on a position with similar content, having a similar effect as the document just approved.
The Poznań undertaking is another such action in the country. There are also actions on a supra-local scale, such as the "Moratorium for Trees" postulated by the FOTA4Climate Foundation and social initiative. The authors of the appeal call for
introduce a national moratorium on the cutting down and destruction of trees in urban areas. The years of modernization of our country, crowned by the amendment to the Law on Nature Protection introduced five years ago, the so-called Lex Szyszko, have led to the practical extermination of trees in cities, towns, villages, along roads, fields and watercourses. A collection of different factors - investments, excessive desire to clean up the area, misunderstood desire to level ordinary inconveniences and risks of everyday life, as well as huge demand for biomass determine the extermination of Polish trees of urban areas, which is already translated into local exacerbation of the effects of a changing climate (heat islands), decline in biodiversity, decline in the comfort of life, but also aesthetic, moral and cultural devastation of Poland
You can sign a petition to national authorities on this issue here.
