It’s a quality that’s bringing the forest to the attention of politicians and generals keen to protect Poland — and the EU — from eastern threats.
The East Shield is a 10 billion złoty (€2.4 billion) plan to bolster border security with anti-tank defenses, electronic and aerial surveillance and military bases.
The program will “make Poland’s border a safe one in times of peace, and impenetrable for an enemy in times of war,” Tusk told an EU election rally last month.
Biologists are seizing on the plan to ensure that some of that money goes to nature protection, and that military and security goals don’t harm the forest’s biodiversity.
There is no better way to achieve that than “developing a plan for appropriate environmental management in the border zone,” biologists from the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN), the country’s top scientific institution, said in a statement.
Apart from building military infrastructure, the government should also invest in “raising groundwater levels, expanding river floodplains, restoring natural wetlands, or reforesting and renaturalizing transformed forest environments,” they said, adding: “These solutions can provide a significant barrier against military aggression.”
