Green Team

a FORCE OF NATURE

ADAM WAJRAK uses his writing talent and passion for wildlife TO DEFEND POLAND’S OLD-GROWTH FORESTS

Adam Wajrak WALKS A NARROW PATH in his dual role as an activist fighting to protect Poland’s ancient woodlands, and as his country’s leading environmental journalist. Wajrak, 33, a staff writer for Warsaw’s Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper, always thought he’d become a scientist or zoologist. “For as long as I can remember, I was fascinated by animals,” he says.

Instead, he went to work for the Gazeta Wyborcza in 1991, funneling his fascination into writing about animal and plant life. Since then, Wajrak has chronicled in books and articles what many fear is a fast-disappearing Polish wilderness. He goes into campaign mode “when there is something to defend,” like centuries-old oak trees in the vast Bialowieska Primeval Forest, lowland Europe’s only remaining old-growth mixed woods, and the mighty Vistula River, which Wajrak calls “the last really wild, big river on our Continent.” The Polish government plans to build seven dams on the river to increase water and electricity supplies, but Wajrak, along with the environmental organization wwf and a host of Polish ngos, warn of harm to the river’s diverse ecosystems.

At times, Wajrak does more than merely report. In 2003, he says he saw district forest authorities cut down oaks in the Bialowieska Forest, which straddles Poland’s eastern border with Belarus, to provide a clearer view of the frontier. That was illegal, says Wajrak, because the trees are in a nature reserve. The environmental organization Gaja filed a civil suit against the authorities, and called Wajrak as a witness. Now a criminal trial looms, with Wajrak likely to testify. Would Wajrak ever get involved in direct action himself? “There is an issue,” he says, “for which I would chain myself to a tree”—the proposed Via Baltica extension, a highway to connect the Baltic states with Warsaw, which could cut through four forest and marsh zones in the country’s northeastern region that are protected by both Polish law and European directives. Wajrak says the project would divide populations of already rare lynx into two enclaves, decreasing their chances of survival.

The issue of the Via Baltica route won’t be resolved for years. For now, Wajrak and his partner, Spanish biologist Nuria Selva Fernández, content themselves with an old homestead in the village of Teremiski, 250 km east of Warsaw in the heart of the Bialowieska Forest. There, they care for young or wounded birds and other animals. Poland, Wajrak says, is one of the few European countries where rare birds and animals can still be seen. “What the communists were not able to destroy, we are now destroying at an amazing pace,” Wajrak says. “We are losing what sets us apart. The destruction will be irreversible.” —By Maryann Bird. Reported by Tadeusz Kucharski/Warsaw

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