Scores of young activists camped in a remote peat bog in the northeast of Poland last month and threatened to chain themselves to trees to stop bulldozers clearing land for a highway.
ROSPUDA VALLEY, Poland -- Scores of young activists camped in a remote peat bog in the northeast of Poland last month and threatened to chain themselves to trees to stop bulldozers clearing land for a highway.
That kind of civil disobedience was forbidden under communism. It was also unnecessary: by the 1980s infrastructure projects had ground to a halt.
Now the government is launching a 100-billion zloty ($33.8 billion) expansion of its road network -- and the first generation to grow up after Poland's 1989 revolution brought democracy wants its say on where those roads go.
"I came here to tell the government it's wrong to destroy such a beautiful place," said Mateusz Wojcik, a 20-year-old engineering student who travelled 800 miles from Wroclaw in southwest Poland to the Rospuda Valley.
"We want to show we can change things."
What started small grew into the biggest environmental protest in Poland since the fall of communism.
Authorities had planned to start work on the highway in March but, under pressure from activists and the European Union, the Warsaw government decided to put the matter to a referendum.
Activists decamped on March 2, the start of the nesting season for the valley's rare birds. They have vowed to return immediately if the government starts to clear land.
WOOLLY MAMMOTH
Throughout February, young Poles hauled tents, backpacks and climbing equipment into the snow-covered valley, a 20 sq km (7.7 sq mile) swath of marshland not far from the Belarussian border.
"We've come from across Poland to say there are better sites for a road," said Magda Figura, a member of the environmental group Greenpeace, her breath freezing in the morning air.
Activists regard themselves as the last line of defence for the valley's more than 50 rare or endangered plants and animals, including the fen orchid, lesser-spotted eagle and whitebacked woodpecker.
Scientists say Rospuda is one of the few pristine peat mires left in Europe and that slicing it down the middle with a highway would be like "slaughtering the last woolly mammoth".
During the day, activists practised climbing pine trees to prepare to strap themselves to the tree-tops and face down construction crews.
"I bought this platform for bird-watching," said Adam Wajrak, grinning wryly as he showed off a fold-up metal seat. "Now I'm using it to block a road."
Poland has a famous history of activism. While governments in Czechoslovakia and Romania kept tight grips on their citizens, Polish shipyard workers formed the Soviet Bloc's first independent trade union, Solidarity.
Only recently have ecological issues appeared on the public radar, and that is largely due to the younger generation.
HIGHWAYS NEEDED
"What they have in common with Solidarity is that they believe in something completely and are willing to put themselves in tough conditions to fight for it," said Andrzej Gwiazda, a former Solidarity leader who was briefly jailed in the 1980s after the government declared martial law.
The outcome of the Rospuda dispute could determine how environmental concerns are balanced against public needs when Poland spends billions of EU development euros in future.
"For the first time since freedom in 1989, we have a well-organized green movement," said Lena-Kolarska Bobinska, head of Warsaw's public affairs institute.
"It's the young people in the swamp and the middle class watching them on television.
"The government is not used to listening to environmentalists. But I think they will have to start."
Half of Poles think the project should be halted, a survey published by daily Gazeta Wyborcza last month showed; although most citizens who live near Rospuda want the highway built.
Environmentalists concede Poland needs to expand its 570-km (356-mile) network of highways.
Lorries and international traffic choke two-lane roads and frustrated drivers run over the centre lines, creating makeshift third lanes and causing hundreds of accidents a year.
Ecologists have put forward an alternative route for the motorway, which will connect Warsaw to Helsinki via the Baltics. Locals are afraid adopting a new plan will cause delays in a highway promised 10 years ago.
Leszek Czokajlo, a town council member in the city of Augustow, told Reuters more than 100 people died in accidents each year on local roads overcrowded with speeding lorries.
On Feb. 25, 300 residents of Augustow, many of them senior citizens, marched to the valley to tell the protesters, most of them under 30, to go home.
The Augustow citizens held wooden crosses symbolising those killed in local car accidents. Some accused the young activists of caring more about "frogs than people".
"The city I'm from has no highways either," said Wojcik, the engineering student. "But this valley is one of a kind and it's not right to build here.
"The government has to pay attention to us." (Additional reporting by Barbara Sladkowska in Warsaw and Malgorzata Rakowiec in Gdansk)
Source: Reuters
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