One hundred years ago, the first nature reserve appeared in Belarus

On January 30, 1925, the Council of People's Commissars of the BSSR issued a decree establishing a state hunting reserve in the Borisov District. In the vast forest and marshland area, despite its name, hunting was prohibited, and fishing, timber rafting, and logging were also stopped. These places have remained a reserve for a century now, and since 2001 they have been officially called the State Nature Conservation Institution "Berezinsky Biosphere Reserve".

The main initiator of its creation was a young and energetic professor of the Belarusian State University, Anatoly Vladimirovich Fedyushin (1891-1972), who was born in Slutsk. Having received a fundamental education at Moscow University before the First World War, he enthusiastically began to save the Belarusian nature from the rapid destruction that the years of military and revolutionary hardships brought. Many species of animals, including common river beavers, were under threat of extinction. Having made an expedition to these places in 1924, Fedyushin discovered more than twenty beaver colonies, after which he persistently began to push the project of organizing a reserve with the leadership. The leadership did not object: the head of the Belarusian Council of People's Commissars at that time was 28-year-old Iosif Adamovich, a native of Borisov, close to the reserve, who supported the idea.

At this point, the rivers form the watershed between the Baltic and Black Sea basins.

The region is unique not only for its inimitable nature: here is the watershed between the Baltic and Black Sea basins. Some of the protected rivers and streams carry their waters to the Western Dvina, and others to the Dnieper. This place, favorable for the movement of goods and trade, has been used since ancient times on the route from the Varangians to the Greeks. Since 1797, by order of Emperor Paul I, the Berezina water system with canals, locks and dams, impressive for that time, was built here by the efforts of Belarusian peasants armed with shovels. The 19th century hydrotechnical complex served for more than a century, its wooden remains are visible to modern tourists, and the two restored locks now allow for canoe trips.

The original office of the reserve was located in the village of Zvenyat (now Borisov district of Minsk region). By 1930, in order to preserve the reserve area, about 30 farmsteads of local farmers were resettled, in 1935 pioneering work on breeding beavers and elks began in the reserve. During the Great Patriotic War, the forest and marsh wealth of the Berezinsky Reserve became a vast partisan territory, especially noticeable in the affairs of the people's avengers was the largest lake in the reserve, Palik. In revenge for the actions of the partisans, the Nazis sought to destroy everything associated with the reserve: buildings, collections, scientific archives, causing multimillion-dollar damage. Post-war restoration was not easy, in the 1950s, an all-Union hunting reserve functioned here for several years instead of the reserve, but from 1958 to the present day, the Berezinsky Reserve exists in its original purpose.

And it not only exists, but develops more and more dynamically every year. In 2024, more than one hundred thousand tourists were convinced of this, the overwhelming majority of them Belarusians and Russians (in the early 2010s, there were three times fewer guests to the reserve). This unique corner of Belarusian nature with an impressive area of 131,785 hectares (this is much more than in 1925) is located on the territory of two Belarusian regions and four districts – Dokshitsy, Lepel and Ushach regions of Vitebsk and Borisov region of Minsk. Nowadays, the luxuriously equipped center of the reserve is located in the village of Domzheritsy in the Lepel district.

The statistics of the Berezinsky Biosphere Reserve alone can pleasantly surprise many times. For about five hundred employees of the reserve, there are 77 carefully recorded bears, and in the hundred-year history of the reserve, not a single bear has ever dared to attack a person. Together with bears, there are 56 species of mammals alone. Half a century ago, in 1974, bison appeared here, brought from the Prioksko-Terrasny Reserve in the Moscow region. With their appearance, the so-called Big European Five now inhabits the Berezinsky Biosphere Reserve, in which the bear and bison are accompanied by elk, lynx and wolf.

The bird kingdom is five times more diverse – at least 234 species of birds live in the reserve, and 179 of them nest here. The reserve is not called Berezinsky for nothing: the same Berezina River, which forever remained in the historical memory of the French after the defeat of Napoleon in 1812, flows meanderingly through the reserve expanses for 110 kilometers. The hydrographic picture is complemented by about eighty more of the most diverse bodies of water: lakes, rivers and streams, oxbow lakes and channels. The water space is abundantly inhabited: there are 34 species of fish in abundance.

The plant abundance is immense: 80 species of plants and mushrooms included in the Red Book of the Republic of Belarus proudly grow against the backdrop of two thousand representatives of the reserve's luxurious flora. Honor and respect are shown here to many, including amphibians. Until the 2000s, frogs and toads died en masse when they stepped on the asphalt of the highway that crosses the reserve, leading from Minsk to Lepel. Now their migration routes pass through specially constructed underground passages under the highway.

One can talk about the local beauty and its inhabitants for a long time, but it is better to see these beauties of the pristine Belarusian nature. Fortunately, all the conditions for tourist life in the Berezinsky Biosphere Reserve have been created and are developing towards modernization. Mythological tourism, which is impressive to the imagination, has also been organized. The reserve has a mythological museum and a mythological trail. In honor of the dragon known in Belarusian mythology, the festival "Shlyakh Tsmoka" is held, attracting thousands of tourists. Moreover, the evil spirits here, like the bears, are not at all scary, but kind.