Forest in Medvezhyno is being totally cleared. Official version: saving it from bark beetles
There's unrest in the capital's Sukharevo microdistrict: the last forest park in the area is rapidly losing trees. Authorities blame the large-scale felling on a bark beetle epidemic. But a careful study of urban development plans and scientific research reveals a sad picture of thoughtlessness.
Medvezhyno forest park after another felling. Photo: social media
Sad photos of stumps where dense forest once stood have appeared on social media. The felling is a continuation of clearings carried out in previous years, expanding the already large clearing towards the development on the even side of Maksim Haretski Street.
Medvezhyno forest park after another felling. Photo: social media
Medvezhyno forest park after another felling. Photo: social media
Minsk residents began to express various theories about why it was necessary to destroy the forest park over several years. Some talk about an alleged desire to lay an automobile road through the green zone to connect streets, others — about clearing a site for a commercial residential complex.
This panic is completely understandable, given how often green (and indeed any protected) zones in Minsk suddenly turn into construction sites, however, in this case, the fears have not yet found documentary confirmation.
Some trees are still awaiting felling. Photo: social media
Medvezhyno forest park after another felling. Photo: social media
Medvezhyno forest park after another felling. Photo: social media
Medvezhyno forest park after another felling. Photo: social media
The approved detailed planning project (DPP) for this territory does not indicate any capital objects in the place of the current felling. State procurement databases also do not list any tender for design or construction in this square. Moreover, if one looks at the geometry of the cleared glades themselves, it absolutely does not coincide with the axes of neighboring streets, which makes the version about laying a transit highway improbable.
Fragment of the approved detailed planning project (DPP) for Medvezhyno forest park. No capital construction is planned on the territory where felling is taking place, only landscaping.
Another version actively discussed by city residents is related to sports infrastructure. Indeed, in mid-February, the head of the main sports department of the Minsk City Executive Committee announced the creation of three ski-roller tracks in Medvezhyno, up to three and a half kilometers long, as well as a rental point with rooms for coaches. Hearing this, many decided that the forest was being cut down precisely for a sports mega-project.
Forest park in a 2020 satellite image. In the northern part of the forest park, the place used for soil storage is still visible. Photo: Google Earth
By 2025, the forest park significantly thinned out as a result of at least two clearings carried out in 2024 and 2025. Photo: Google Earth
By 2025, the forest park significantly thinned out as a result of at least two clearings carried out in 2024 and 2025. Now, the remainder closest to the development has also been cut down. Photo: Google Earth
But a ski-roller track is essentially an ordinary asphalt path, albeit a little wider than a forest park trail. It is designed to wind between trees, fitting as much as possible into the existing landscape. Laying such routes requires removing individual trunks, but for this, it is absolutely not necessary to cut down the forest in whole hectares, creating clearings the size of a football field. Sports infrastructure simply cannot explain the scale of clearing we see today.
What scientists think about the situation in the forest park
The official version of the Minsk Forest Park Management has remained unchanged from previous years: everything is the fault of the bark beetle, which allegedly totally destroys coniferous trees due to climate change and the consequences of land reclamation.
Part of the forest park that was cleared this year. Photo: Google Earth
Officials argue that a tree can stand green but already be dead inside, which is why even outwardly healthy trunks are cut down. A convenient position, very difficult for an ordinary passerby to disprove, but one that contradicts scientific data.
In 2022, scientists from the Geographical Faculty of BSU conducted a detailed study of the ecological state of precisely this forest park. They examined over a hundred coniferous trees in various parts of it. The researchers' conclusions turned out to be very interesting.
Assessment of the ecological state of the Medvezhyno forest park's stands, conducted by BSU scientists in 2022
The absolute majority of tree stands were recognized as healthy or simply weakened, which is an absolute norm for a forest confined within dense urban development.
Indeed, severely damaged trees were found by scientists only on the southern border of the park, along the noisy and gas-polluted Sharangovich Street. However, the paradox lies in the fact that today's total clearings are happening nowhere near there.
They are concentrated in the central part of Medvezhyno, which, according to scientific data, was in a completely satisfactory condition and did not require any radical sanitary clearings.
Residents point out that there are no signs of disease on the tree cuts. Photo: social media
Residents point out that there are no signs of disease on the tree cuts. Photo: social media
Man-made anthropogenic load
Officials note that the cause of the problems in the forest park is climate change and aggressive anthropogenic impact on the green zone. However, they themselves treated this territory with disregard for ecology.
For several years, the forest park area was used as a landfill for construction waste. Photo: Google Earth
In the period from 2017 to 2019, residents of the area unsuccessfully complained that communal services had turned the northern part of the forest park along Haretski Street into a real landfill for construction waste. During the modernization of heating networks, thousands of tons of mineral soil were dumped there.
Excavators leveled mountains of earth, some of which exceeded human height, burying the root systems of living trees beneath them.
At that time, the district administration and environmentalists responded to people with bureaucratic dismissals, calling it an agreed "temporary storage." With such barbaric interference in the green zone, no bark beetle is needed.
«Nasha Niva» — the bastion of Belarus
SUPPORT US
Comments