7. Drawa ( To view location on itinerary map click here)

Map taken from The Drawa National Park Website 

General

Drawa National Park was established in 1990 in order to protect 11,019 hectares of forests, mires, grasslands and post-glacial lakes which drain into the River Drawa.   Running down the western side of the site is the River Drawa; 30 km of which is one of the best known canoeing runs in Poland. 

The undulating landscape of sandy hills, river valleys with lakes and peat bogs, was formed during the last stage of Vistulian glacial period.   Feeding into the Drawa River from the east is the Plociczna River, which runs through a complex of 13 post-glacial lakes.  All of the rivers and lakes contain very pure water and there are various types of lake within the park, including:  eutrophic, calcium with a bed of stonewort; and lakes overgrown with lobelia and moss.  The diversity of the lakes is due to a unique combination of natural processes that occur within the exceptionally clean  water.

The Park has always been an area of forests that were managed to various degrees.  Relatively intensive forest exploitation took place in the 17th and 18th centuries when charcoal and potash were mass produced.  Prior to WWII, there was a German community living within the the area practicing low intensity agriculture and forestry.  One oddity within the park is a deep and wide, 30 km long ditch, which took water from the highest lake to irrigate water meadows lying within cleared areas in the Plociczna River Valley.  The principle of this is that the flood water kept the frost out of the ground, allowing a flush of early spring grass growth for stock. The 30km ditch is an incredible feet of engineering, considering that it was built by French prisoners of the Napoleonic wars.

Some images of Drawa:

Wildlife

The majority of the area (80%), consists of primeval forest and of the 140 plant communities present, 18 are forest and brushwood communities. Mixed and coniferous forest dominates with species including pine, beech, oak, alder, mixed with spruce, larch, birch, hornbeam and aspen present.  To the east of the park, pine high forests are dominant; in the west there are mainly beech and hornbeam dry forests with occasional oaks, marshy forests and aspen forests. There are numerous veteran trees including some 450-year old oaks, 140-year old pines and 350-year old beech trees.

The Park has over 800 species of vascular plants, 43 of which are protected, and over 200 species of fungi.

The Park has at least least 40 recorded mammal species, including beaver, marten, otter, deer and wild boar.  Birds inhabiting the park include osprey Pandion haliaetus, black kite Milvus migrans, white-tailed eagle Haliaeetus albicilla , lesser spotted eagle Aquila pomarina, goldeneye Bucephala clangula , goosander Merganser merganser, eagle owl Bubo bubo, other species of owl, black stork Ciconia nigra and dipper Cinclus cinclus.

Site Visits

I undertook two days of very interesting site visits at the Park with Leslaw Wolejko of Szczecin University.  We visited a range of sites including many grasslands, bogs and mires where grazing had been abandoned since WWII and afforestation was evident.  We also looked at european beaver activity and Leslaw's idea to use salt licks attached to posts to attract wild graziers into areas where their feeding and trampling activity is important to maintain biodiversity.  

While in the area I stayed with Leslaw and his wife at their property, approximately 15km from the park but adjacent to another area of Poland due to be designated under the Habitats Directive.  This included a lake owned by an old friend of Leslaw, which was being drained in order to move carp.  The lake is managed as a successful carp fishery; as the Poles being devout Catholics choose to eat carp during the Xmas holiday period.   There was a wealth of wildlife around the ponds and I saw osprey, white tailed eagle, marsh harrier and a very unusual territorial face off between a white stork and a black stork.  The owner of the site was very enthusiastic about wildlife and took us to a point where we could see a white tailed eagles nest.