MINSK, 2 February (BelTA) - More than 860,000 hectares of wetlands have been preserved in natural or close to natural state in Belarus, said Vitaly Korenchuk, a consultant with the Biological Diversity Department at the Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Ministry of Belarus, BelTA has learned.
“In December 2020, Belarus enforced the law on the protection and use of peatlands, one of the main goals of which is to preserve natural wetlands. To date, 863,000 hectares of wetlands in our country have been preserved in natural or close to natural state. This is about a third of the total area of wetlands we had in the country before the drain campaign," Vitaly Korenchuk said.
According to him, the area of protected wetlands is expanding. A government resolution will be issued soon to transform the Olmany Mires national reserve and to increase its area by 9,700 hectares (up to 103,900 hectares).
Work on environmental rehabilitation of degraded peatlands also continues. Four sites of the degraded Ladovo peatland spanning 3,300 hectares in Khoiniki District and Kalinkovichi District of Gomel Oblast have been reswamped. Some $180,000 has been raised in international technical assistance for these purposes from the government of the Republic of Korea under the project "Restoration of degraded peatlands in Belarus - Phase 2." “The first phase of this project was implemented in Cherikov District and Kostyukovichi District of Mogilev Oblast in 2018-2019. It provided for rewetting two degraded peatlands with the total area of over 1,000 hectares,” Vitaly Korenchuk added.
In 2020, under the UNDP/GEF project Wetlands, Belarus undertook efforts to rewet and restore the disturbed hydrological regime of Zhada peatland (Sharkovshchina District and Miory District of Vitebsk Oblast) and Berezovik peatland (Smorgon District of Grodno Oblast and Vileika District of Minsk Oblast). Thanks to this project, Belarus also developed a digital database of peatlands that will be updated by organizations affiliated with the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus. Plans for 2021 include determining borders of Brest Oblast peatlands to be formalized by the Brest Oblast Executive Committee and give natural marshes of the region the status of specially protected areas.
World Wetlands Day is celebrated on 2 February. The Ramsar Convention, also known as the Convention on Wetlands, was signed on this day in 1971. Belarus joined the convention in 1999, committing to preserve 26 wetlands of international significance with the total area of 778,000 hectares (3.7% of Belarus' territory), including four cross-border wetlands (two on the border with Ukraine and two on the Belarusian-Lithuanian border). In 2009, the Belarusian government approved the strategy to implement the Ramsar Convention.
