Forests
85,6 % of the Reserve's total area is covered with forests. Stretching widthwise to make a single tract, they fully reflect the natural qualities of a southern taiga forest. More than half of the forests are coniferous trees, basically spruce and pine. Particularly common here are pine groves with an emerald–like moss carpet and a variety of bilberry, blueberry and heather shrubs.
The soil humidity and fertility increase at lower lands and there is more spruce in the pine stands. Yet, particularly impressive are the pine groves in the areas where the boulder trains and hills are. On their slopes covered in gray lichen and green moss golden trunk pines grow into the sky and beneath are the gray-blue crowns of mixed wood trees and dark spruce triangles. At lowland floodplains and on fen outer boundaries surly and shady spruce stands prevail.
In the midst of these fens, on mineral islets they have retained their original look — ages old, thick and grim, with so many fallen trees scattered around. The human foot seldom steps here, whereas the bear is a real lord of these places. Broad–leafed forests occupy a smaller area in the Reserve, just 500 hectares. Oak groves have been preserved only in the floodplains of the Berezina river, while ash woods mixed with spruce, black alder, oak, lime and elm are concentrated near lake Palik.
Being exclusively biologically diversified, broad–leafed forests are a unique storage of Belarus' natural genofund.
Especially rare are the virgin leaf forests at fens. Their characteristic feature is that one comes across several generations of black alder at a time. Next to thick, sturdy trunks of maternal canopy there is a variety of young trees of different age. Once an old tree falls, one or two young shoots immediately come out reaching for the sun. In this way, the forest is ever growing.
The share of most important woody species in the land cover of the Berezinsky Reserve is as follows: pine (Pinus sylvestris) — 38 %; birch (Betula verrucosa and B. pubescens) — 20 %; black alder (Alnus glutinosa) — 14 %; and spruce (Picea abies) — 9 %.
The forest management (exploitation) ceased in the core zone in 1925 when the Reserve was established. It still continues on a localised and non–intensive basis in the buffer zone where only dead trees may be felled, mainly to supply local inhabitants with firewood. The forest is used for timber production in the "Barsuki" experimental-sylvicultural farm to generate income for the Reserve.
In various places of the Reserve a few pine, spruce and oak plantations survived on about 9 % of the land. They are left to develop naturally without human intervention and have been studied in order to follow the dynamics of forest succession and related phenomena (presence of symbiotic and pathogenic fungi, tree species rotation, etc.).
To make scientific research and surveillance easier, forest tracks have been made whereever possible. They form a regular grid of about 1 km x 1 km. Some tracks in exposed areas are dug out to eliminate part of the vegetation and act as a firebreak.