Berezinsky Biosphere Reserve
WHAT IS A BIOSPHERE RESERVE?
It has taken for nature thousands of years to create these amazing places. The glaciers sliding down from the north changed the terrain and landscapes: ridges, hills and islets alternating with lake depressions. The latest of them, the Valdai Glacier, melted down more than 10,000 years ago and has since played an important role in the formation of today’s Belarusian lake district. The enormous lake left by the glacier and stretching for dozens of kilometers gradually disappeared revealing its bed with boulder trains and falling into numerous minor and major water reservoirs. They were slowly overgrown with vegetation and turned into marshland. A bird’s eye view provides an excellent possibility to see the result of the process — sponge-like green mires stretching for miles and miles around. Smoky-blue spruce and pine-covered hills hover over them. The sunlight gleams on the dark-blue surfaces of lakes that have been left behind by the glacier. These are lakes Olshitsa, Plavno, Manets, Domzheritskoye as well as lake Palik, which is the biggest of them and is situated in the southern part of the Reserve, on the southern boundary of the former periglacial water basin. From above one can see the free-flowing Berezina making turns and loops, constantly changing directions, slowing down its flow in countless saucer-lakes. Its length across the Reserve is more than a hundred kilometers.
With the aim of preserving these fabulous sites or, rather, with the aim of protecting and increasing the number of valuable wild animals, beaver and wildfowl, in particular, the Berezinsky State Reserve was established here on 30 January 1925. Behind its establishment were study materials resulting from the expedition launched by the zoologist A. Fediushin.
Today the Berezinsky Biosphere Reserve is a real pearl of the European natural heritage. It’s a specimen of virgin nature, a rare and even unique corner on the continent where nature has retained its original look and character. It is our national wealth, which we have to protect and conserve.
The unique flora and fauna of the Berezinsky Reserve have been preserved thanks to the conservation regime that has been observed at the site for a long time. Having developed in a natural environment, its wildlife has become a real model of European nature.
About 800 vascular plant species, 216 moss species, 238 lichen species, 317 water plants and 463 mushroom species are found in the Reserve. Among them are such rare and unique for Europe species as Ladies’ Slipper Orchid, Crisped Lily, Bladder Fern, Red Helleborine. 38 higher vascular plant species have been entered into the Red Data Book of the Republic of Belarus.
The Reserve is an ideal habitat for numerous animal species that until recently were widely known in Belarus and are either extinct or exceptionally rare today. The Reserve’s vertebrate animals world is today represented by 56 species of mammals, 230 species of birds, 5 reptiles and 11 amphibia. Rivers and lakes are home for 34 fish species. Among the mammals particularly peculiar are such species as Brown Bear, Lynx, Wolf, Eurasian Otter, Elk, Beaver and European Bison. The bison herd has lived at large in the Reserve since 1974. Wildfowl are the Reserve’s special pride. Up to two dozens of Wood Grouse and three dozens of Black Grouse males may be observed on major leks in spring.
Plentiful food has given rise to a vast diversity and considerable populace of birds of prey: Great Grey, Ural and Short-eared Owls, Tengmalm’s Owl, Golden Eagle, White-tailed Sea-Eagle, Greater and Lesser Spotted Eagles. The bird fauna of the natural mires is also very specific where nests of Snipe, Gray and Black Stork, Partridge and Corncrake may be found in close proximity to one another. In spring and autumn thousands of flocks of migrating birds feel at home here with so much food and excellent rest conditions. Today the total number of biological species inhabiting the Berezinsky Reserve surpasses 6,000. Many more species of wildlife are still to be studied by researchers, so the existing list will definitely be extended.