
Białowieża Primaeval Forest, known as ''Belavezhskaya Pushcha'' (''Белавеская пушча'') in Belarus and ''Media:Puszcza Bialowieska.ogg'' in Poland, is an ancient virginal forest straddling the border between Belarus and Poland, located 70 km north of Brest, Belarus. It is the only remaining part of the once immense forest spreading across the European Plains. This UNESCO World Heritage Site and Biosphere Reserve lies in south-western Belarus, in parts of the Brest voblast (Kamenets, Belarus and Pruzhany districts) and Hrodna voblast (Svisloch district), and near the town of Białowieża in the Podlasie Voivodship (62 km south-east of Bialystok and 190km north-east of Warsaw) in Poland. On the Polish side it is partly protected as ''Białowieski Park Narodowy'', or Białowieża national park, and occupies over 100 km². On the Belarusian side the Biosphere Reserve occupies 1,771 km²; the core area covers 157 km²; the buffer zone - 714 km²; and the transition zone - 900 km²; with the National Park and World Heritage Site comprising 876 km². The border dividing 2 countries runs across the forest and it is closed for big animals and tourists as well, for the time being. ==The Belarusian part of the Reserve== The Belovezhskaya Pushcha headquarters at Kamieniuki, Belarus include laboratory facilities, a zoo where wisent (reintroduced into the park in 1929), konik (a semi-wild horse), wild boar, moose, and other indigenous animals may be viewed in their natural habitat, as well as a small interpretive museum, restaurant, snack bar and hotel facilities which were built during the Soviet era and are currently in a state of disrepair. Due to the lack of facilities and internal tourist regulations (special registration in Brest, Belarus is needed in the Visa office of the Ministry of the Interior Affairs, or in the Intourist hotel) few foreign tourists visit the Belarusian Pushcha annually. ==The Polish part of the Reserve== On the Polish side, in the Białowieża National Park, one finds the Białowieska Glade, originally built for the tsars of Russia — the last private owners of the forest (from 1888 to 1917) when the whole forest was within the Russian Empire. The Glade is equipped with a hotel, restaurant and parking areas. Guided tours into the strictly controlled areas of the park can be arranged by horse drawn carriage. Approximately 100,000 tourists visit the Polish part of the Forest annually. == History of the forest and the reserve == This area of eastern Europe was originally covered by viriginal forests like the Belovezhskaya Pushcha. People traveled along river routes until the 14th century; roads and bridges appeared much later. Limited hunting rights were granted throughout the forest in the 14th century. In 15th century the forest became a property of king Wladyslaw Jagiello who used the forest as a food reserve for his army marching towards the Battle of Grunwald. A wooden manor in Białowieża became his refuge during the 1426 plague. The first recorded piece of legislation on the protection of the forest dates to 1538 when a document issued by king Sigismund I of Poland instituted the death penalty for poaching a wisent. He also built a new wooden hunting manor in Białowieża, which became the namesake for the whole forest. The forest was declared a hunting reserve in 1541 for the protection of wisent (European bison). In 1557, the forest charter was issued, under which a special board was established which examined forest usage. In 1639 king Ladislaus IV of Poland issued the "Białowieża royal forest decree" (''Ordynacja Puszczy J.K. Mości leśnictwa Białowieskiego''). The document freed all peasants living in the forest in exchange for their service as ''osocznicy'', or royal hunters. They were also freed of taxes in exchange for taking care of the forest. The forrest was divided onto 12 triangular areas (''straże'') with a centre in Białowieża. Until the reign of John II of Poland the forest was mostly unpopulated. However, in late 17th century several small villages were established for development of local iron ore deposits and tar production. The villages were populated with settlers from Masovia and Podlachia and many of them still exist. After the Partitions of Poland tsar Paul of Russia turned all forresters into serfs and handed them over along with parts of forest which they lived in to various Russian aristocrats and generals. Also, a large number of hunters entered the forest since all protection was abolished. The number of wisents fell from more than 500 to less than 200 in 15 years. However, in 1801 tsar Alexander I of Russia reintroduced the reserve and hired a small amount of peasants for protection of the animals. By the 1830s the number of wisents reach 700. However, since most of the forresters took part in the November Uprising (500 out of 502), their posts were abolished, leading to a breakdown of protection. Alexander II of Russia visited the forest in 1860 and decided that the protection of wisents must be reintroduced. Following his orders, locals killed all predators: wolf, bears and lynx (cat)es. In 1888 the Russian tsars became the owners of all of Pushcha. Once again the forest became a royal hunting reserve. The tsars started sending the wisents as gifts to various European capitals while at the same time populating the forest with deers, elks and other animals brought from all over the empire. The last major tsarist hunt took place in 1912. During the World War I the forest suffered heavy losses. The German army seized the area in August 1915 and started to hunt for the animals. During 3,5 years of Germany occupation more than 200 kilometres of railway tracks were laid in there in order to ease the industrial development of the area. Three big lumber-mills were built in Hajnowka, Bialowieza and Gródek. Until September 25 when an order was issued not to hunt in the reserve at least 200 wisents were killed. However, German soldiers, poachers and Russian marauders continued the slaughter until February 1919 when the area was captured by the Polish army. The last wisent was killed just a month earlier. After the Polish-Soviet War in 1921 the core of Puszcza Białowieska was declared a National Reserve. In 1923 it was discovered that only 54 wisents survived the war in various zoological gardens all around the world - none of them in Poland. In 1929 a small herd of 4 wisents was bought by the Polish state from various zoological gardens and from the Caucasus (where the wisent became extinct just several years afterwards). To protect them, most of the forest was declared a Białowieża National Park in 1932. The reintroduction proved successful and in 1939 there were 16 wisents in the Bialowieza National Park. Two of them were from the zoological garden in Pszczyna and were direct descendants of a pair of wisents from the forest given to Duke of Pszczyna by tsar Alexander II in 1865. During the World War II, after the September Campaign the area fell under Soviet Union occupation. In 1939 most of the local inhabitants were arrested and sent to the Gulag. They were replaced with Russian forest workers, but in 1941 the forest was occupied by Germans and the Russian inhabitants were also deported. Hermann Göring planned to create the biggest hunting reserve in the world there, but those plans never came to fruition. Since July 1941 the forest became a refuge for both Polish and Soviet partisans. German authorities organized mass executions of people suspected of aiding the resistance movement. In July 1944 the area was captured by the Red Army. Withdrawing Wehrmacht blew up the historical Białowieża hunting manor. After the war part of the forest was left in Poland while a large part was annexed by USSR to Belarusian SSR. The Soviet part was put under public administration while in the Polish part the Białowieża National Park was reopened in 1947. The Pushcha was protected under: Decision No. 657 of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, 9 October 1944; Order No. 2252-P of the USSR Council of Ministers, 9 August 1957; and Decree No.352 of the Byelorussian SSR Council of Ministers, September 16, 1991. The Reserve was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1992 and internationally recognised as a Biosphere Reserve under UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere Programme in 1993. A new attraction in the Belarusian part of the Reserve is a museum of the "New Year" and the residence of ''Father Frost'' (Dzied Maroz or Ded Moroz, literally: Grandfather Frost; the East Slavic counterpart of Santa Claus). Thousands of tourists have visited this museum as of 1 January 2004. The Belarusian part of the reserve also became the place where the leaders of the three East Slavic nations signed the agreement to dissolve USSR. On December 8, 1991, Belarus Supreme Soviet Chairman Stanislau Shushkevich, Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk, and Russian President Boris Yeltsin signed a document stating that "the Soviet Union as a geopolitical reality [and] a subject of international law has ceased to exist." The document simultaneously announced the creation of a new entity in the post-USSR territory - the Commonwealth of Independent States. ==See also== * List of national parks of Poland == External links == * [http://whc.unesco.org/sites/627.htm The UNESCO official site] * [http://www.franknature.nl/pl/bia.htm Bialowieza photographs] * [http://bp21.org.by/en/ Belovezhskaya Pushcha dedicated conservation/environmental website] National parks of Belarus Biosphere reserves of Poland National parks of Poland Forests of Poland World Heritage Sites in Poland World Heritage Sites in Belarus Podlasie Voivodship
How come that, with so many edit wars around here, this article remains untouched? Every child knows that the true name of the forest is Puszcza Bialowieska! But seriously, only joking. What I really wanted to ask is whether this article needs some info on the fact that that the whole forest has been a National Park since 15th century? This makes it one of the oldest National Parks still existing...User:Halibutt 14:06, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC) :You can have it as you are wrong. The true name in which language? The importance of which part of the forest? The information about the belarussian part is that they are felling trees on an astounding rate. So what is important? The part that is well known or the part that might be well known but is not. :Try going there and have a good look.. User:GerardM 18:10, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC) :: Both names (Belavezhskaya Pushcha and Bialoveza Forest) are equally valid, but refer to different parts of the territory, see the UNESCO site. This article is about the Belarussian part, with brief mentioning of the Polish one. One has all possible rights to replace the Bialowieski National Park redirect by a full-blown article. I added a piece from UNESCO site. I understand, the information from there is in public domain, unless specifically indicated (like GIS data, which requires donation). User:Mikkalai 19:12, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC) == Page moves == I've moved this page from Belavezhskaya Pushcha to Bialowieza Forest for the following reasons: * ''Pushcha'' doesn't mean anything in English. Replacing it with "forest" seems obvious to me. * Since the forest is named after a town in Poland, I can see no reason to write its name in Belarussian in the title. Of course, both Polish and Belarussian names of the forest are still mentioned in the opening paragraph. --User:Kpalion 07:14, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC) I moved it back: # it is the official ''English'' name, see e.g., the UNESCO list. # If you want Bialowieza Forest article about the Polish part, you are welcome to cut material from here to there. User:Mikkalai 07:24, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC) # Google hits: Belavezhskaya Pushcha + Belovezhskaya Pushcha: 7,550 +1,680; 2,410 for "Bialowieza Forest", 5,590 for "Puszcza Białowieska". So much for English language :-) User:Mikkalai 07:36, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC) # Correction (English language pages only): Belavezhskaya Pushcha + Belovezhskaya Pushcha: 4,450 + 886; for "Bialowieza Forest": 2,090, for "Puszcza Białowieska" 57 + 163 (ł vs. l) letter. User:Mikkalai According to the [http://whc.unesco.org/nwhc/pages/doc/mainf3.htm UNESCO website] you keep referring to, the official name of the forest is Belovezhskaya Pushcha/Bialowieza Forest. But I'm not sure whether we really have to copy the strange politically correct solutions of UNESCO; according to the same website, Jerusalem is a separate country!
I also can see no reason for two separate articles about one forest which happens to be divided by a political border. It would be like having one article about Canadian Rocky Mountains and one about US Rocky Mountains.
I suppose that my proposition is the most English you can get. ''Belovezhskaya Pushcha'' is just a romanization of the Belarussian name. I'm not going to repeat myself, see explanation above.
And is Google the only arbiter on the English language? --User:Kpalion 08:08, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC) *UNESCO: you are looking at the wrong page. (Do you also think that there is a country Belarus/Poland, mentioned there as well? :-)) Better see [http://whc.unesco.org/nwhc/pages/doc/mainf3.htm]. *What's wrong with romanization? It as a ''name''. Do you want me to "translate" my name as well and sign myself as User:Victoriferuos? * Please note also that the alalogy with, e.g., Volga River being a translation of "reka Volga", will not do. Volga is the actual name of the river, while "Bialowieza", etc. is ''not'' the name of the forest. Tsarskoye Selo is ''not'' Tsar Village. User:Mikkalai 18:17, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC) Alright, I'm not going to argue with you; perhaps you're right. The case for ''Belovezhskaya Pushcha'' is that a greater part of the foretst is on the Belorussian side. I'd only like to say thay we were talking about hte same UNESCO site - and it does say Belovezhskaya Pushcha/Bialowieza Forest. For some strange reason the Belarussian name (used for the Belarussian part of the forest) has only been romanized but the Polish has been was translated. This seems quite awkward to me. Maybe it's beacuse Poles are used to translating foregin names into Polish (e.g. we do translate ''Tsarskoye Selo'' as ''Carskie Sioło'') so they also tend to translate names into English. But if we assume that the Belarussian name is what the English speakers use for the whole forest, than it's OK. --User:Kpalion 21:56, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC) :UNESCO: Probably you misunderstood my brief explanation in mocking tone, sorry. At their site they list Belavezhskaya Pushcha/Bialowieza Forest under the "Belarus/Poland" header, meaning that belarussian part is puscha and polish part is forest. There are quite a few similar case there; e.g., :*Austria/Hungary :**Cultural Landscape of Fertö/Neusiedlersee : Indeed, it seems the usage of pushcha/forest is polarized by which side is writing about it, with noticeable bias that "forest" tends to refer to the Polish part, thus producing a possible confusion. How about a trade-off for the common article: Belavezhskaya Pushcha and Bialowieza Forest (slash cannot be used in titles)? With the following introduction: :Bialowieza Primaeval Forest, known as Беловежская пуща in Belarus, which is traditionally transliterated as 'Belavezhskaya Pushcha, and Puszcza Białowieska in Poland, traditinally translated as Bialowieza Forest, is a ancient virginal forestreserve stradling....
: User:Mikkalai 23:07, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)
::Actually, this would be too awkward and even worse. The title should be either Bialowieza Forest or Belavezhskaya Pushcha. I believe the former would be better, but, well, I could live with the latter. After all, Bialowieza Forest redirects here anyway. I would also simplify the intro:
::Białowieża Primaeval Forest, known as ''Belavezhskaya Pushcha'' (''Беловежская пуща'') in Belarus and ''Puszcza Białowieska'' in Poland, is a ancient virginal forest stradling....
::And BTW, if we were ''really'' translating that name (Polish or Belarussian, doesn't matter) into English, we'd get: "White Tower Forest"; but of course I don't mean to go that far.
::--User:Kpalion 23:31, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)
::: OK. You almost convinced me. If someone else comes and renames the article your way I will no longer object. (Let me strike this out for not to encourage someone unnecessarily :-) This summer I'll be visiting Belarus. Shall we meet somewhere in the Belavezhski Forest? User:Mikkalai 00:16, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)
::::I'd do the renaming myself, but I'm somehow involved so I don't know if it counts. As to the meeting somewhere in between - might be interesting. However, crossing the border might be a problem since Belarus is the only Poland's neighbour to still have mines on the frontier...User:Halibutt 01:25, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)
You guys are too funny, and Mikkalai, can you bring back one of those mines from the western front? You know it does not really matter what the name is, that is supposed to be the value of redirects, you can makes all variations of the names redirects and bold face them in the lead-in to the main article. I vote for the Russian name, after all wasn't it the Imperial Tsars that originally named it? (If not excuse me for starting another controversy). Anyway, whatever you slavs decide to do in your nationalistic fervour remember that really it isn't Polish or Belarusian or Russian or anything else, it is just part of our common world heritage (and beautiful, I visited the Belarusian part of it three years ago around May 1). User:Alex756 User talk:Alex756 05:23, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)
:No, the name sake for the forest is the village (now a town) of Białowieża which in turn is named after a "white tower", or a white wooden manor built there for the king Wladyslaw Jagiello. I expanded the history section since apparently we don't need two separate articles. Also, the forest stands there since some 25 000 years, and it's been divided for 60, so there's not really much sense behind such a division. User:Halibutt 21:20, Jul 9, 2004 (UTC)
Ded Moroz is not an invention of the Soviet Union as far as I can tell. see:
http://www.santalady.com/gg/moroz.html User:Alex756 User talk:Alex756 07:13, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)
==The Britannica title==
The Britannica name for this article is Belovezhskaya Forest. Grue ">User:Grue 14:15, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)
:Britannica used the Russian word. Very stupid of them. Again they demonstrated that they are not up to the high encyclopedic standard that they set to themeselves. --User:Rydel 16:12, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)
See other meanings of words starting from letter:
Words begining with Bialowieza_Forest:
Bialowieza_Forest
Bialowieza_Forest
Bialowieza_forests
Bialowieza Forest
Białowieża Primaeval Forest, known as ''Belavezhskaya Pushcha'' (''Белавеская пушча'') in Belarus and ''Media:Puszcza Bialowieska.ogg'' in Poland, is an ancient virginal forest straddling the border between Belarus and Poland, located 70 km north of Brest, Belarus. It is the only remaining part of the once immense forest spreading across the European Plains. This UNESCO World Heritage Site and Biosphere Reserve lies in south-western Belarus, in parts of the Brest voblast (Kamenets, Belarus and Pruzhany districts) and Hrodna voblast (Svisloch district), and near the town of Białowieża in the Podlasie Voivodship (62 km south-east of Bialystok and 190km north-east of Warsaw) in Poland. On the Polish side it is partly protected as ''Białowieski Park Narodowy'', or Białowieża national park, and occupies over 100 km². On the Belarusian side the Biosphere Reserve occupies 1,771 km²; the core area covers 157 km²; the buffer zone - 714 km²; and the transition zone - 900 km²; with the National Park and World Heritage Site comprising 876 km². The border dividing 2 countries runs across the forest and it is closed for big animals and tourists as well, for the time being. ==The Belarusian part of the Reserve== The Belovezhskaya Pushcha headquarters at Kamieniuki, Belarus include laboratory facilities, a zoo where wisent (reintroduced into the park in 1929), konik (a semi-wild horse), wild boar, moose, and other indigenous animals may be viewed in their natural habitat, as well as a small interpretive museum, restaurant, snack bar and hotel facilities which were built during the Soviet era and are currently in a state of disrepair. Due to the lack of facilities and internal tourist regulations (special registration in Brest, Belarus is needed in the Visa office of the Ministry of the Interior Affairs, or in the Intourist hotel) few foreign tourists visit the Belarusian Pushcha annually. ==The Polish part of the Reserve== On the Polish side, in the Białowieża National Park, one finds the Białowieska Glade, originally built for the tsars of Russia — the last private owners of the forest (from 1888 to 1917) when the whole forest was within the Russian Empire. The Glade is equipped with a hotel, restaurant and parking areas. Guided tours into the strictly controlled areas of the park can be arranged by horse drawn carriage. Approximately 100,000 tourists visit the Polish part of the Forest annually. == History of the forest and the reserve == This area of eastern Europe was originally covered by viriginal forests like the Belovezhskaya Pushcha. People traveled along river routes until the 14th century; roads and bridges appeared much later. Limited hunting rights were granted throughout the forest in the 14th century. In 15th century the forest became a property of king Wladyslaw Jagiello who used the forest as a food reserve for his army marching towards the Battle of Grunwald. A wooden manor in Białowieża became his refuge during the 1426 plague. The first recorded piece of legislation on the protection of the forest dates to 1538 when a document issued by king Sigismund I of Poland instituted the death penalty for poaching a wisent. He also built a new wooden hunting manor in Białowieża, which became the namesake for the whole forest. The forest was declared a hunting reserve in 1541 for the protection of wisent (European bison). In 1557, the forest charter was issued, under which a special board was established which examined forest usage. In 1639 king Ladislaus IV of Poland issued the "Białowieża royal forest decree" (''Ordynacja Puszczy J.K. Mości leśnictwa Białowieskiego''). The document freed all peasants living in the forest in exchange for their service as ''osocznicy'', or royal hunters. They were also freed of taxes in exchange for taking care of the forest. The forrest was divided onto 12 triangular areas (''straże'') with a centre in Białowieża. Until the reign of John II of Poland the forest was mostly unpopulated. However, in late 17th century several small villages were established for development of local iron ore deposits and tar production. The villages were populated with settlers from Masovia and Podlachia and many of them still exist. After the Partitions of Poland tsar Paul of Russia turned all forresters into serfs and handed them over along with parts of forest which they lived in to various Russian aristocrats and generals. Also, a large number of hunters entered the forest since all protection was abolished. The number of wisents fell from more than 500 to less than 200 in 15 years. However, in 1801 tsar Alexander I of Russia reintroduced the reserve and hired a small amount of peasants for protection of the animals. By the 1830s the number of wisents reach 700. However, since most of the forresters took part in the November Uprising (500 out of 502), their posts were abolished, leading to a breakdown of protection. Alexander II of Russia visited the forest in 1860 and decided that the protection of wisents must be reintroduced. Following his orders, locals killed all predators: wolf, bears and lynx (cat)es. In 1888 the Russian tsars became the owners of all of Pushcha. Once again the forest became a royal hunting reserve. The tsars started sending the wisents as gifts to various European capitals while at the same time populating the forest with deers, elks and other animals brought from all over the empire. The last major tsarist hunt took place in 1912. During the World War I the forest suffered heavy losses. The German army seized the area in August 1915 and started to hunt for the animals. During 3,5 years of Germany occupation more than 200 kilometres of railway tracks were laid in there in order to ease the industrial development of the area. Three big lumber-mills were built in Hajnowka, Bialowieza and Gródek. Until September 25 when an order was issued not to hunt in the reserve at least 200 wisents were killed. However, German soldiers, poachers and Russian marauders continued the slaughter until February 1919 when the area was captured by the Polish army. The last wisent was killed just a month earlier. After the Polish-Soviet War in 1921 the core of Puszcza Białowieska was declared a National Reserve. In 1923 it was discovered that only 54 wisents survived the war in various zoological gardens all around the world - none of them in Poland. In 1929 a small herd of 4 wisents was bought by the Polish state from various zoological gardens and from the Caucasus (where the wisent became extinct just several years afterwards). To protect them, most of the forest was declared a Białowieża National Park in 1932. The reintroduction proved successful and in 1939 there were 16 wisents in the Bialowieza National Park. Two of them were from the zoological garden in Pszczyna and were direct descendants of a pair of wisents from the forest given to Duke of Pszczyna by tsar Alexander II in 1865. During the World War II, after the September Campaign the area fell under Soviet Union occupation. In 1939 most of the local inhabitants were arrested and sent to the Gulag. They were replaced with Russian forest workers, but in 1941 the forest was occupied by Germans and the Russian inhabitants were also deported. Hermann Göring planned to create the biggest hunting reserve in the world there, but those plans never came to fruition. Since July 1941 the forest became a refuge for both Polish and Soviet partisans. German authorities organized mass executions of people suspected of aiding the resistance movement. In July 1944 the area was captured by the Red Army. Withdrawing Wehrmacht blew up the historical Białowieża hunting manor. After the war part of the forest was left in Poland while a large part was annexed by USSR to Belarusian SSR. The Soviet part was put under public administration while in the Polish part the Białowieża National Park was reopened in 1947. The Pushcha was protected under: Decision No. 657 of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, 9 October 1944; Order No. 2252-P of the USSR Council of Ministers, 9 August 1957; and Decree No.352 of the Byelorussian SSR Council of Ministers, September 16, 1991. The Reserve was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1992 and internationally recognised as a Biosphere Reserve under UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere Programme in 1993. A new attraction in the Belarusian part of the Reserve is a museum of the "New Year" and the residence of ''Father Frost'' (Dzied Maroz or Ded Moroz, literally: Grandfather Frost; the East Slavic counterpart of Santa Claus). Thousands of tourists have visited this museum as of 1 January 2004. The Belarusian part of the reserve also became the place where the leaders of the three East Slavic nations signed the agreement to dissolve USSR. On December 8, 1991, Belarus Supreme Soviet Chairman Stanislau Shushkevich, Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk, and Russian President Boris Yeltsin signed a document stating that "the Soviet Union as a geopolitical reality [and] a subject of international law has ceased to exist." The document simultaneously announced the creation of a new entity in the post-USSR territory - the Commonwealth of Independent States. ==See also== * List of national parks of Poland == External links == * [http://whc.unesco.org/sites/627.htm The UNESCO official site] * [http://www.franknature.nl/pl/bia.htm Bialowieza photographs] * [http://bp21.org.by/en/ Belovezhskaya Pushcha dedicated conservation/environmental website] National parks of Belarus Biosphere reserves of Poland National parks of Poland Forests of Poland World Heritage Sites in Poland World Heritage Sites in Belarus Podlasie Voivodship
Bialowieza Forest
How come that, with so many edit wars around here, this article remains untouched? Every child knows that the true name of the forest is Puszcza Bialowieska! But seriously, only joking. What I really wanted to ask is whether this article needs some info on the fact that that the whole forest has been a National Park since 15th century? This makes it one of the oldest National Parks still existing...User:Halibutt 14:06, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC) :You can have it as you are wrong. The true name in which language? The importance of which part of the forest? The information about the belarussian part is that they are felling trees on an astounding rate. So what is important? The part that is well known or the part that might be well known but is not. :Try going there and have a good look.. User:GerardM 18:10, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC) :: Both names (Belavezhskaya Pushcha and Bialoveza Forest) are equally valid, but refer to different parts of the territory, see the UNESCO site. This article is about the Belarussian part, with brief mentioning of the Polish one. One has all possible rights to replace the Bialowieski National Park redirect by a full-blown article. I added a piece from UNESCO site. I understand, the information from there is in public domain, unless specifically indicated (like GIS data, which requires donation). User:Mikkalai 19:12, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC) == Page moves == I've moved this page from Belavezhskaya Pushcha to Bialowieza Forest for the following reasons: * ''Pushcha'' doesn't mean anything in English. Replacing it with "forest" seems obvious to me. * Since the forest is named after a town in Poland, I can see no reason to write its name in Belarussian in the title. Of course, both Polish and Belarussian names of the forest are still mentioned in the opening paragraph. --User:Kpalion 07:14, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC) I moved it back: # it is the official ''English'' name, see e.g., the UNESCO list. # If you want Bialowieza Forest article about the Polish part, you are welcome to cut material from here to there. User:Mikkalai 07:24, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC) # Google hits: Belavezhskaya Pushcha + Belovezhskaya Pushcha: 7,550 +1,680; 2,410 for "Bialowieza Forest", 5,590 for "Puszcza Białowieska". So much for English language :-) User:Mikkalai 07:36, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC) # Correction (English language pages only): Belavezhskaya Pushcha + Belovezhskaya Pushcha: 4,450 + 886; for "Bialowieza Forest": 2,090, for "Puszcza Białowieska" 57 + 163 (ł vs. l) letter. User:Mikkalai According to the [http://whc.unesco.org/nwhc/pages/doc/mainf3.htm UNESCO website] you keep referring to, the official name of the forest is Belovezhskaya Pushcha/Bialowieza Forest. But I'm not sure whether we really have to copy the strange politically correct solutions of UNESCO; according to the same website, Jerusalem is a separate country!
I also can see no reason for two separate articles about one forest which happens to be divided by a political border. It would be like having one article about Canadian Rocky Mountains and one about US Rocky Mountains.
I suppose that my proposition is the most English you can get. ''Belovezhskaya Pushcha'' is just a romanization of the Belarussian name. I'm not going to repeat myself, see explanation above.
And is Google the only arbiter on the English language? --User:Kpalion 08:08, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC) *UNESCO: you are looking at the wrong page. (Do you also think that there is a country Belarus/Poland, mentioned there as well? :-)) Better see [http://whc.unesco.org/nwhc/pages/doc/mainf3.htm]. *What's wrong with romanization? It as a ''name''. Do you want me to "translate" my name as well and sign myself as User:Victoriferuos? * Please note also that the alalogy with, e.g., Volga River being a translation of "reka Volga", will not do. Volga is the actual name of the river, while "Bialowieza", etc. is ''not'' the name of the forest. Tsarskoye Selo is ''not'' Tsar Village. User:Mikkalai 18:17, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC) Alright, I'm not going to argue with you; perhaps you're right. The case for ''Belovezhskaya Pushcha'' is that a greater part of the foretst is on the Belorussian side. I'd only like to say thay we were talking about hte same UNESCO site - and it does say Belovezhskaya Pushcha/Bialowieza Forest. For some strange reason the Belarussian name (used for the Belarussian part of the forest) has only been romanized but the Polish has been was translated. This seems quite awkward to me. Maybe it's beacuse Poles are used to translating foregin names into Polish (e.g. we do translate ''Tsarskoye Selo'' as ''Carskie Sioło'') so they also tend to translate names into English. But if we assume that the Belarussian name is what the English speakers use for the whole forest, than it's OK. --User:Kpalion 21:56, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC) :UNESCO: Probably you misunderstood my brief explanation in mocking tone, sorry. At their site they list Belavezhskaya Pushcha/Bialowieza Forest under the "Belarus/Poland" header, meaning that belarussian part is puscha and polish part is forest. There are quite a few similar case there; e.g., :*Austria/Hungary :**Cultural Landscape of Fertö/Neusiedlersee : Indeed, it seems the usage of pushcha/forest is polarized by which side is writing about it, with noticeable bias that "forest" tends to refer to the Polish part, thus producing a possible confusion. How about a trade-off for the common article: Belavezhskaya Pushcha and Bialowieza Forest (slash cannot be used in titles)? With the following introduction: :Bialowieza Primaeval Forest, known as Беловежская пуща in Belarus, which is traditionally transliterated as 'Belavezhskaya Pushcha, and Puszcza Białowieska in Poland, traditinally translated as Bialowieza Forest, is a ancient virginal forest
See other meanings of words starting from letter:
B
BA | BC | BD | BE | BF | BG | BH | BI | BJ | BK | BL | BM | BN | BO | BP | BR | BS | BT | BU | BW | BX | BY | BZ |Words begining with Bialowieza_Forest:
Bialowieza_Forest
Bialowieza_Forest
Bialowieza_forests
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