Forest in Miadzviezhyna Massively Cleared. Official Version: Saving from Bark Beetle
Things are restless in the capital's Sukharevo microdistrict: the area's last forest park is rapidly losing trees. Authorities attribute the large-scale clearcutting to a bark beetle epidemic. But if one carefully examines urban development plans and scientific research, a sad picture of thoughtlessness emerges.
Miadzviezhyna Forest Park after another felling. Photo: social media
Sad photos of stumps where dense forest once stood have appeared on social media. The felling is a continuation of clearings carried out in previous years, expanding an already large clearing towards the development from the even-numbered side of Maxim Haretski Street.
Miadzviezhyna Forest Park after another felling. Photo: social media
Miadzviezhyna Forest Park after another felling. Photo: social media
Minsk residents began to express various theories as to why it was necessary to destroy the forest park over several years. Some speak of an alleged desire to lay a road through the green zone to connect streets, others — about clearing the site for a commercial residential complex.
This panic is completely understandable, given how often in Minsk green (and indeed any protected) zones suddenly turn into construction sites; however, in this case, fears are not yet finding documentary confirmation.
Some trees are still awaiting felling. Photo: social media
Miadzviezhyna Forest Park after another felling. Photo: social media
Miadzviezhyna Forest Park after another felling. Photo: social media
Miadzviezhyna Forest Park after another felling. Photo: social media
The approved detailed planning project (DPP) for this territory does not indicate any capital objects in the place of the current clearings. In the databases of state procurements, there is also no tender for design or construction in this square. Moreover, if one looks at the geometry of the felled clearings themselves, it absolutely does not coincide with the axes of neighboring streets, which makes the version of laying a transit highway improbable.
Fragment of the approved detailed planning project (DPP) for the "Miadzviezhyna" forest park. No capital construction is planned in the area where felling is taking place, only landscaping.
Another version actively discussed by city residents is related to sports infrastructure. Indeed, in mid-February, the head of the main sports department of the Minsk City Executive Committee announced the creation of three roller ski tracks in Miadzviezhyna, up to three and a half kilometers long, as well as a rental point with rooms for coaches. Hearing this, many decided that the forest was being cut down specifically for a sports mega-project.
The forest park in a 2020 satellite image. In the northern part of the forest park, a spot previously used for soil storage is still visible. Photo: Google Earth
By 2025, the forest park had significantly thinned out as a result of at least two felling operations conducted in 2024 and 2025. Photo: Google Earth
By 2025, the forest park had significantly thinned out as a result of at least two felling operations conducted in 2024 and 2025. Now, the remaining part closest to the development has also been cut down. Photo: Google Earth
But a roller ski track is, in essence, an ordinary paved path, even if it's a bit wider than a forest park trail. It is designed to wind between trees, fitting as much as possible into the existing landscape. To lay such routes, individual trunks have to be removed, but for this, it is absolutely not necessary to clear whole hectares of forest, creating clearings the size of a football field. Sports infrastructure simply cannot explain the scale of clearing we see today.
What Scientists Think About the Situation in the Forest Park
The official version of the Minsk Forest Park Management has remained unchanged for years: the bark beetle is to blame for everything, allegedly totally destroying coniferous trees due to climate change and the consequences of land reclamation.
Part of the forest park that was felled this year. Photo: Google Earth
Officials insist that a tree can stand green but already be dead inside, so even externally healthy trunks are felled. A convenient position, very difficult for an ordinary passerby to dispute, but one that contradicts scientific data.
In 2022, scientists from the BSU Faculty of Geography conducted a detailed study of the ecological condition of this particular forest park. They examined over a hundred coniferous trees in various parts of it. The researchers' conclusions turned out to be very interesting.
Assessment of the ecological condition of the "Miadzviezhyna" forest park's tree stand, conducted by BSU scientists in 2022
The absolute majority of the tree stands were recognized as healthy or simply weakened, which is an absolute norm for a forest squeezed into dense urban development.
Truly severely damaged trees were found by scientists only on the southern border of the park, along the noisy and gas-polluted Sharangovicha Street. However, the paradox lies in the fact that today's total clearings are taking place nowhere near there.
They are concentrated in the central part of Miadzviezhyna, which, according to scientific data, was in a completely satisfactory condition and required no radical sanitary clearings.
Residents point out that there are no signs of disease on the tree cuts. Photo: social media
Residents point out that there are no signs of disease on the tree cuts. Photo: social media
Man-made Anthropogenic Load
Officials note that the problems in the forest park are caused by climate change and aggressive anthropogenic impact on the green zone. However, they themselves treated this territory with disregard for ecology.
For several years, the forest park area was used as a landfill for construction waste. Photo: Google Earth
In the period from 2017 to 2019, residents of the district fruitlessly complained that utility services had turned the northern part of the forest park along Haretski Street into a real landfill for construction waste. During the modernization of heating networks, thousands of tons of mineral soil were dumped there.
Excavators leveled mountains of earth, the height of which in places exceeded human height, burying the root systems of living trees beneath them.
At that time, the district administration and environmentalists responded to people with bureaucratic letters, calling it an agreed "temporary storage." With such barbaric interference in the green zone, no bark beetle is needed.
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