Beavers are destroying valuable trees at the confluence of the Rivers Mukhavets and Zapadny Bug near the Brest Fortress World War II memorial some ten kilometers west of Brest.
The rapidly growing Canadian beaver population has cut down all the aspens that stood on the Zapadny Bug's bank, Valery Gubarenko, director of the memorial, told BelaPAN on Tuesday.
Now, according to the director, the white willows surrounding the fortress, which are an endangered species, are under threat of extinction, but the memorial administration lacks the wire netting required to protect the trees. In an attempt to find a remedy, Mr. Gubarenko first approached a hunters' society, but it said that the Canadian beaver itself is an endangered species and its illegal shooting is punishable by a fine of some $400.
"I have to deal with the beavers instead of pushing for more funding for the memorial's renovation," he complained. The director then wrote to the regional Committee for Natural Resources and Environmental Protection, which referred the letter to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection.
"I have complained to the minister recently and I'm waiting for a reply. Let them move the beavers somewhere else if they can't shoot them down, or else you won't recognize the nation's main military monument when the fortress will host celebrations on the 60th anniversary of Belarus' liberation [in July 2004]," Mr. Gubarenko said. "The beavers gnawed another tree last night and I had to order that it be cut down," he added.
More than 100 people were evacuated from the Brest train station as power cables caught fire broke in the basement on Monday.
Emergency services were called at noon after station workers saw smoke coming through ventilation holes into the customs check-room and the ticket sales office, Sergei Mashnov, spokesman for the Brest Regional Department for Emergency Situations, told BelaPAN.
Nine emergency units were sent to scene. Rescuers evacuated all people from the two halls and cut power supply to the customs check-room, which resumed operation later. The fire was brought under control, but rescuers remained at the station to investigate the cause.
The Polish government may soon propose granting visa exemptions to the Belarusians and Poles residing within 50 kilometers from the shared border, Polish MP Eugeniusz Czykwin said at Tuesday's meeting of
Belarusian and Polish lawmakers in Belarus' Belovezhskaya Pushcha national park. "I hope that Belarus would accept
the proposal," he noted.
Speakers said that the move would help reopen points of simplified border crossing for border area residents. Nikolai Cherginets, a member of the Belarusian National Assembly's Council of the Republic, said that residents and the government of the Pruzhany district had petitioned the legislature to help reopen such crossings, as their closure made it
impossible for them to visit relatives and care for graves. The Poles residing near the border have similar problems, Mr. Czykwin noted.
The introduction of stricter visa requirements on October 1 hit the Belarusians much worse than the Poles. In October, Poland's consular offices issued more than 40,000 visas to Belarusians, while Belarusian visas were granted to slightly more than 6,000 Poles, according to the State Border Troops Committee.
Prosecutors consider bringing charges against a 52-year-old retired Russian army colonel suspected of stealing 21 white cedar trees in central Brest, Viktor Vasilevsky, spokesman for the regional police office, told BelaPAN.
The city government's Brestzelenstroi enterprise planted 90 trees on Krupskaya Street behind the city government's office.
One of the city's best hotels, Vesta, and apartments of city's police and KGB chiefs and the head of the regional government, Vasily Dolgolyov, are located on this very street. Brestzelenstroi head Anatoly Slepchenko reported to the police when he noticed that trees were disappearing for several days.
A witness's tip led the police to the suspect's garage, where they found one tree. The colonel admitted to stealing, saying he sold the trees on the market for 3,000-5,000 rubels (around $2) to feed his family.
Mr. Slepchenko called the man's actions "barbarism." He said that his company had spent more than one billion rubels planting trees in the city in the past ten months. Arkady Kostyuchik, chief of the region's criminal police, suggested that Brestzelenstroi should inform the police where it plants trees so that the latter will send patrols to the area.
Authorities in Brest plan to organize events to mark the 86th anniversary of the 1917 Russian revolution.
On November 5, a festive rally at the assembly hall of the Brest Regional Trade Union Association is to bring
together veterans, workers and employees of the city's Leninsky district.
On November 6, the Trade Union Palace of Culture will host a similar rally for the city's Moskovsky district. The city government says that it has not received any applications for street rallies or demonstrations.
The local branch of the Belarusian Party of Communists (BPC) intends to stage a march and a brief rally near the Lenin statue at the city's square named after the revolution leader, Leonid Maistruk, a local leader of the BPC, told BelaPAN.
The city government in Minsk has denied the BPC permission to stage a march in city center on November 7.
The BPC plans to hold a conference on November 5 instead and lay flowers at the Lenin statue on Independence Square.
The lists of those waiting for a visa at the Polish Consulate General in Brest have grown shorter, and consular officers promise that they will shorten further within this month, as the consulate opens a new building for handling visa applications.
The consulate has reportedly issued 15,000 visas since Poland introduced stricter visa requirements on October 1. As Visa Consul Alina Chernyavskaya told BelaPAN, the consular staff, working two shifts, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., have been issuing between 600 and 700 visas daily, compared with 200 to 300 in early September, when they worked one shift.
On October 29, the Belarusian foreign ministry summoned Polish Ambassador Tadeusz Pawlak to hand him an official note that urged his country's consular offices to clear the backlog of visa applications.
Waiting times have shortened as well, from two weeks in September to just five days. There are no more long lines of vehicles at Brest's border checkpoints. It now takes about an hour to complete all
customs formalities at the Zapadny Bug custom house. Nonetheless, there are no plans to reduce the number of inspectors, according to Sergei Maksimov, spokesman for the custom house. "The staff used to be overloaded with work. Now they work in a normal mode. Why should we cut the staff?" he told BelaPAN.
The remains of some 570 Russian soldiers killed during World War I were reburied at the Garrison Cemetery in Brest on November 4.
The bones were found this past summer by construction workers who were digging trenches to lay down communications
cable in Brest's Dubrovka neighborhood.It took search squads more than three months to unearth the remains. The searchers discovered a tombstone put up in 1928 that said in Polish that the grave contained the remains of 38 unknown Russian soldiers buried in 1915. Apart from
the human remains, the searchers found a Bible book with bullet holes in it, military badges, coins and a fourth-class Saint George Cross (Russia's combat order).
Experts so far cannot say whether the site is a former military cemetery and whether the mass grave contains the remains of soldiers only, Alla Kondak, an official with the Brest city government's Culture Department, told BelaPAN. She noted that the excavations would continue the following year. The remains were put into 30 coffins that were placed into one mass grave. The bones of the holder of the Saint George
Cross were put into a separate grave. Crosses and tombstones were erected on the graves. Representatives of the Brest City Executive Committee, the City Soviet and the City Military Registration and Enlistment Office laid wreaths. The ceremony involved a military brass band and honor guards, who fired a salute.
27 November 2003