Bialowieza V

Two related concerns of mine led me to Poland and most especially to the beleaguered Polish forests of Bailowieza. Firstly my son's grandmother started her life in Poland miraculously surviving a Nazi concentration camp before being exiled to the USA. She came from a small village near these forests and many of her Jewish community worked in these forests. Secondly, as a conservationist who has devoted many decades of my life to protecting New Zealand's lowland forests I was enthralled to go to the last great remaining lowland forest of Europe where the European Bison remained. It is still being logged and my conservationist friends in Poland are still fighting the same cause we thankfully won in New Zealand decades ago.