Polesia

Bordering Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia and shaped significantly by the Prypiat River, Polesia is a massive lowland region covering more than 18 million ha. It is one of Europe’s largest natural complexes, with habitats including transitional mires, fens, and marshes, raised bogs, wetlands, peatlands and ponds. Almany Mires, one of Europe’s largest mires, can be found here, covering an area of 100,000 ha. The area also boasts one of the largest complexes of floodplain meadows and alluvial floodplain forests.

Polesia supports numerous species of nationally and internationally threatened flora and fauna. The yearly gathering of Eurasian wigeon and godwits on the floodplains of the Prypiat is the largest in Central and Eastern Europe, and the vast natural floodplain meadows and mires provide critical spawning grounds for many fish species.

Project context and opportunity

Anthropogenic pressures including logging, fires, drainage, unsustainable hunting and berry foraging, illegal amber mining, radioactive contamination (caused by the Chernobyl disaster of 1986) and construction of roads and pipelines are damaging the ecological integrity of Polesia. As a result, the connectivity between the area’s nationally and internationally-threatened populations of mammals, including wolf, lynx and European bison, as well as several bird species, is at risk.
Regional and national policies are being developed, including a post-2025 regional strategy for protected area development in Belarus, providing timely entry points through which to halt this fragmentation and create an ecologically coherent network that restores, maintains and enhances the natural processes linking wetland and terrestrial habitats.