Abstract
Pasturing of livestock in forests has had profound consequences for Europe’s landscapes. In Białowieża Primeval Forest (BPF), cattle pasturing was a part of traditional forest use that ceased only in the second half of the twentieth century. We collected information on the institutional changes governing forest cattle pasturing and the changes in spatial extent of cattle presence in BPF in last two centuries and information on cattle numbers and their impact on forest regeneration. The spatial extent of cattle pasturing was highly variable, with the distribution of grazing areas frequently changing. Forest near villages (constituting less than 10 % of the area) was most often used for cattle grazing during continued longer time periods. Historical data showed that cattle have had a clear impact on forest regeneration. However, the frequent changes that occurred in the extent of cattle grazing indicate that their impact occurred locally, was smaller in other less intensively used areas, and in the forest as a whole.
Highlights
Traditional management of forest resources in pre-industrial times was mainly shaped by two driving forces: socioeconomic factors and ecological conditions (Szaboand Hedl 2013; Mullerovaet al. 2014)
After the modern forestry management was introduced in the eighteenth century and nineteenth century, the forest exploitation was put under the formal institutional governance
The goal of our paper is to (1) reconstruct the main turning points in the transition from informal to formal institutional governance over management of livestock pasturing in Białowiez_a Primeval Forest (BPF) in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; (2) assess the spatial extent of cattle pasturing inside BPF during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; (3) assess the number of cattle present in BPF; (4) estimate the impact of cattle pasturing in the forest in the middle of the twentieth century
Summary
Traditional management of forest resources in pre-industrial times was mainly shaped by two driving forces: socioeconomic factors (i.e. demand for resources) and ecological conditions (Szaboand Hedl 2013; Mullerovaet al. 2014). It has led to the development of local, informal ways of forest management balancing those two factors in European lowland forests. Traditional types of forest resource use like coppicing, haymaking on forest meadows or wood pastures (Rackham 2004; Bergmeier et al 2010) existed without or with very little formal institutional governance. After the modern forestry management was introduced in the eighteenth century and nineteenth century, the forest exploitation was put under the formal institutional governance. The informal ways of forest use were considered obsolete or even harmful for the ‘‘correct’’ woodland development and were gradually removed from both private- and stateowned forests. The shift towards formal governance over forest management disconnected the social-ecological systems from their resources at local scale and has led, in the longer term, to cultural severance and loss of traditional forest knowledge (Rotherham 2007)
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